The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe

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THE PLACE OF MAGIC

INTELLECTUftL HISTORY OF EUROPE

LYNN THORNBrKE, A. M.,

mf'Um* Vnieeriits Felltne in Burop6<tn IlittOrg

A DISSERTATION
»OrMmBr> W PARTUL fUIFILMfiMT OF TUK BKJCreEHKNTS

i-i,, .i>e '.•riii,.h - niK-'iuK or phiu- -t^v

' lUii-y OF PouTicAL Science
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THE PLACE OF MAGIC

IN THE

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF EUROPE

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BY

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LYNN TjBORNDIKE, A. M.,

Sometime Unieeraity Fellow in European History

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

IN THE

Faculty of Political Science
CoLUMBU University

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

ILLUSTRATIONS OF BELIEF IN MAGIC IN MEDLEVAL AND IN EARLY

MODERN TIMES

PAGE

General belief in witchcraft, in astrology, and in the existence of

magicians . . ii

Even the most educated men believed in astrology 12

Further illustration of such beliefs among men of learning, and even

among scientists 13

Isidore and Bede 14

Alexander of Neckam 15

Michael Scot 16

Roger Bacon 18

Bacon's acceptance of astrology 18

Bacon's belief in occult influence 19

Vincent de Beauvais, Bernard Gordon, Albertus Magnus, Arnald

of Villanova 19

Cabalistic doctrines of Renaissance scholars 20

Jerome Cardan 22

Paracelsus and Tycho Brahe 22

Francis Bacon 23

Summary of these beliefs 23

Question whether they are all closely connected 24

Question whether they were regarded by their authors as magic . . 25

Importance of magic 26

CHAPTER II

magic; its origins, and relations to SCIENCE

Magic once regarded as a reality 27

Magic praeternatural rather than supernatural o.'j

Belief in magic perhaps older than belief in divine beings .... 28

Magic not originally a secret art 28

5] 5

6 CONTENTS [6

PAGE

Attitude of primitive man towards nature o . . . . 29

His effort to explain strange phenomena 30

His belief in lucky things 31

His desire to know the future 31

Hence the probable origin of belief in magic 31

Chief characteristics of magic 32

Difficulty in defining magic . . • .. . Z7>

Gradual disappearance of magic before science 34

Possible union of magic and science 34

Importance of union of magic and science 35

Method of treating that theme in this essay . 36

CHAPTER III

PLJNY's NATURAL H^STQHY

i A fitting starting-point for our discussion 37

I. The. Character of the Work:

Its extensive treatment of both science and njagic .... 37
Objections to regarding it as a true picture Qf ancient

science 38

Reasons for so regarding it . • 39

Pliny the Boswell of ancient science - • 40

Pliny's relation to mediaeval science 41

II. Pliny* s Discussion of Magic:

Its significance 41

Pliny's remarks concerning the history of magic 42

"Magic" false, according to Pliny . . 42

** Magic " an obscene and criminal art,. according to Plipy. 44

III. Illustrations of Pliny's Fundamental Belief in Magic:

Inconsistency of his declared scepticism 44

His belief that animals possess magic properties 45

His belief that plants have similar occult virtues 45

Strange qualities of minerals 46

Magical powers of man 47

Efficacy of magical ceremonial 48

Pliny's belief, unpiistakable 49

Though probably limited 49

Question as to extent of his belief in astrology 50

His account of the heay.enly bodies 50

Influence of the stars upon our planet 51

7]

CONTENTS

7

PAGE

Influence of the Stars ugon man . 52

Belief of Pliny in portents 53

Attitude of Pliny towards various popular superstitious ob-
servances • • • 53

Pliny not esoteric 54

Conclusions to be drawn from the Natural History 54

CHAPTER IV

SOME ANTECEDENTS OF THE- BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Derivative and cosmopolitan character of intellectual life during the

imperial peripd 56

Extent of our discussion of its antecedents 56

•Question as to freedom of Greek thought from magic ..... 57

■Some evidence to the contrary 57

Doctrines of the Stoics favorable to magic • • • 59

Pjrthagorean theory of numbers 59

Attitude of Plato towards ** magic," as he understood the word . . 60

Plato's fantastic view of nature 60

. Aristotle's accept^ce of astrology . 61

^^lstot\t' s History of Animals 62

Cato's De Re Rustica 63

CHAPTER V

BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE

: Outline of contents of this chapter . . . • . • . . • • . 65

I. General Attitude:

Prejudice against '*n|agic'' and (^rondewnation of Magi . . 65

Views of AptUc^ius and of PJiilostrajl^s 66

In reality a widespread belief in magic t^j

Explanation of jfipparent o{u>.osi.tion to, astrology .. .. ... 68

Galen 69

Neo-Platonism . 70

Philosophy confounded with magic . . 71

II. Philo of Alexandria and Allegorical Interpretation:

Question as to connection.9f allegorical interp^eta.tiqn with

magic ...... .......... . . . . , . . 72

Historical importance of allegorical interpretation :^d of

Philo ......;....'. . . . . . .; '.' .... ^2>

Nature of. Philo* s allegorical interpretation . . ^ . . ^ . , . . 73

His influence in the Jiliddle Ages ........ . . . . . . 75

8 CONTENTS [8

PAGE

III. Seneca's Problems of Nature and Divination:

Scientific traits of Seneca 75

His tendency to be esoteric and mystical • . . 76

Ground covered by his book 'j'j

His partial rejection of magic . 'j'j

His acceptance of divination 78

His discussion of divination from thunder 79

IV. Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and Astrology:

An illustration of the astrology of the scientist 80

Ptolemy and his influence 80

Scientific tone of the preliminary remarks in the Tet-
rabiblos 81

An attempt to base astrology upon natural law ..*•.. 82

Ptolemy* s explanation of the influence of the planets ... 82

Summary of remaining contents of his first book 83

Contents of the other three books 83

V. The Hermetic Books and Occultism:

Their nature and history, legendary and actual 84

Their contents 86

Their importance 87

CHAPTER VI

CRITICS OF MAGIC

Review of the usual attitude towards magic in the Roman Empire. 88

I. Opponents of Astrology:

Cicero, Favorinus and Sextus Empiricus ....... 89

Considerations which discount their scepticism 89

Inadequacy of their arguments . , 90

Astrology attacked as being impracticable 91

General problem of sidereal influence left untouched ... 92

II. Cicero's Attack upon Divination:

In a way an attack upon magic as a whole 93

Form and arrangement of De Divinatione 94

Its relations to the past and to the future 94

Appeal of Quintus to antiquity and to tradition 94

Cicero's reply; condemnation of reliance on tradition ... 95

Divination declared quite distinct from science 95

Divination declared quite contrary to the laws of science . 96

Idea of magical sympathy rejected 97

9]

CONTENTS

9

PAGE

Cicero's attitude very unusual for his time 98

Question as to his consistency 98

CHAPTER VII

THE LAST CENTURY OF THE EMPIRE

Intellectual characteristics of the period 99

Marcellus of Bordeaux 99

Ammianus Marcellinus 99

His description of the state of learning at Alexandria 100

His justification of divination as a science loi

His extraordinary misquoting of Cicero 102

Synesius 103

His belief that all parts of the universe are in magic sympathy . . 103

Further instances of his trust in magic 104

Macrobius 106

CHAPTER VIII

Conclusion 108

CHAPTER I

IljtUSTRATIONSiOF BEJil^FIN !N^GICjIN 'MPDIJBYAL AND

.IN EaRI-Y MOD^JIN TiMKS

.Even sl flight . acquaintance with European history re-
veals the .existence of . a number of curious . anjl apparently
.unreasonable beliefs. prevalent throughout a period extend-
ing from i^arly inediaeval to comparatively recent times.
^TJiere is the belief in witchcraft, for instance. From the
canons of synods in the early Middle Ages down to the
pitiless executions during the witchcraft. delusion, there i3
abundant evidence of its prominence. It played its part npt
oply in humble life, but in court iutfigues and in the a.ccusa-
tiojjs brought ^t state trial§.

The belief that one's future could be learned by observing
the stars was equally widespread. Astrologers throve at the
courts of kings, and sometimes theiradvice was. taken ev«n
by him whose every act was held to be under special cjivine
direction. It would be a great mistake to think that the
astrologer was maintained merely for the a;mu3eni^t, of
king and court, like the jester. His i utterances were ^ taken
most seriously, and the principles of his art were so gener-
ally accepted as to heconje the cprnmonplapesof the tbpugbt
•^nd ;the conversation of daily Jif^. In .1305, for in-
stance, when certain cardinals urged Pope Clement V to
return to Rome, they reminded him that. every planet was
,ipost powerful in .its owu house. ^ Indeed, ^veu in our

iH. C. Lea, History of the Inquisitiqnjn the M^ddfe /^geis (188;;),
II] II

j" J

■> ^ .

' J -

J - ■'

^ J a ^ J

•^ ^

12 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [12

Speech to-day numerous vestiges of the astrological art sur-
vive.^

Moreover, a grander and more imposing witchcraft dis-
played itself in the stories of the wizard Merlin and in the
persons of the wicked magicians with whom knights con-
tended in the pages of mediaeval romance. So strong was
the tendency to believe in the marvelous, that men of learn-
ing were often pictured by subsequent tradition, if not by
contemporary gossip, as mighty necromancers. Even Ger-
bert, who seems to have done nothing more shocking than
to write a treatise on the abacus and build a pipe-organ,
was pictured as running off with a magician's book and
daughter, hanging tmder bridges between earth and water
to escape noxious spells, and making compacts with Satan.^

The attitude of the average mind as it has just been illus-
trated was to a large extent characteristic of the best in-
•'"J structed and most widely read men. The erudite poet Dante
accepted the influence of the constellations upon human des-
tiny. Bodin maintained in his Republic — ^perhaps the great-
est book pn political science written during the sixteenth

•• •••

• ! .

• • • • •

• ••.

c •

• •••

•>• •-

• vol. iii, p. 437. Mr. Lea's chapter on " Sorcery and the Occult Arts " is

very interesting and contains much material which it is difl&cult to find
elsewhere.

•••* ^ We speak of persons as jovial or saturnine or mercurial in tem-

perament ; as ill-starred, and so on.

: 2 The classic on the theme of magic reputations incurred by the

•••• learned in ancient and mediaeval times is Gabriel Naude's Apologie

* pour tous les grands personages qui ont esti faussement soupgonnes de

Magie** Paris, 1625. That such reputations were often unjustly in-
curred was recognized long ibefore Naude, however. To say nothing
•:J» now of Apuleius' Apologia, to which we shall refer later, attention may

..,,* be called to the fact that even William of Malmesbury, while relating

with apparent credulity the legends in regard to Gerbert, had the grace
to admit that "the common people often attack the reputation of the
learned, and accuse any one of dealing with the devil who excels in his
art." Gesta Re gum Anglorum, book ii, sees. 167, 168.

• •

• ••••

• ••• •

•

13] BELIEF IN MAGIC 13

century — that astrology was very useful in tracing the de-
velopment of society/ Aquinas, chief of the mediaeval the-
ologians, accepted astrological theory, except as limited by
human free will, and further admitted that most men make
little use of their liberty of action but blindly follow their
passions, which are governed by the stars. ^ Among other
great mediaeval churchmen and canonists, d'Ailly and Ger-
son both believed that God signified important events in
advance through the stars, and d'Ailly made some astrolog-
ical predictions himself. Astrology was much taught in the
mediaeval universities,* and was regarded as the climax of
mathematics and as an essential part of medicine.

It is with such beliefs, accepted by educated men and
forming a part of the learning and science of the times, that
we are concerned in this essay. First, it is necessary to give
some further evidence of the nature and of the general ac-
ceptance of these beliefs. This object will be most quickly
and effectively secured by a resirme of the views of a few
of the men most prominent in the intellectual history of the
past. These men should offer fair, if not flattering, illus-
trations of the learning and culture of their times. In
especial we shall notice the curious notions of those who
wrote on scientific subjects or showed even a considerable

^ Ripubliqne, book iv, ch. 2, cited by W. E. H. Lecky, History of
Rationalism (1900), vol. i, p. 28. The chapter upon "Magic and Witch-
craft " contains considerable material bearing upon our theme. A simi-
lar attitude to that of Bodin is found in a political treatise of about
the year 1300, probably written by Pierre du Bois, where an argument
for the universal rule of a French monarch is based on astrology. N. de
Wailly, MSmoire sur un opuscule anonyme (Memoires de Tlnstitut Im-
perial de France), vol. xviii, pt ii, p. 442.

^ Sumtna Theologica, pars prima, quaest. 115, arts. 3 and 4.

• For some data on this point see Hastings Rashdall, The Universi-
ties of Europe in the Middle Ages (1895), vol. i, pp. 240-250; vol. ii,
pp. 290, 452, 458, 459.

X

14

MAGIC IN WTULLECTUAL HISTORY

[1-4

.<

apt)r(y£tGh toW^iidfe; tHe rtioAetn scientific spirit. TKis we shall
do partly bi5<:auSe their- writings seem at first thought the
place where wef should least expect to find such notions, and
hence furnifeh- striking illustration of' the alhiost universal
accdptatice of these bdiefs ; partly because, as we shall soon
fltid' reason to concludCj there is really some connection be-
tween . such' beliefs atid science:

The early Middle Ages^ are not distinguished for! the
prevalence- of education smd of culture in Latin' Christen-
dom, to= say nothing of profound knowledge or original
thought in any particular branch of learning: But in such
learning and science as there was may be found examples of
the-beliefs which we wish to consider.' We see thcan' in Isi-
dore of' Seville, whose Etymologies, we may well believe,
constituted an oft-consulted encyclopedia- in many a monas-
tic library for several centuries after the seventh, when it-
appeared. This saint, like almost all gOod' Christians of
his day, believed that marvels could be effected through
magic by the aid of demons, although- such resort to eviL
spirits he could not condemn too strongly.^ But he saw no
harm in holding that certain stones possess astonishing^
powers,? that the dog-star afflicts bodies with disease, and
that the appearance of a cOmet signifies pestilence, famine
or war.* He maintained that it was no waste of time to look
into the meaning of the numbers which occur in the Bible.
He thought that they might reveal many sacred mysteries.*

^ Etymologiae, hk. viii,- ch. 9. In Migne's Patrologia Latina, vol.
Ixxxii.

^ Ibid,, bk. xvi, passim.

8 Ibid., bk. iii, ch. 71. He cbndemned astrology, (however. See ibid.,
and bk. iii, ch. 2"/.

* " Liber Nutneroriim qUl in Satictis Scriptutis Occurunt." (Also in
Migne, vol. Ixxxiii, col. 179.) "Non est superfluum numerorum causas
in Scripturis Sanctis attendere. Habfent enim quamdam scietitiae doc-
trinam plurimaque mystica sacramenta."

I.g] BELIEF IN MAGIC' 15

Bcdc expressed similar views in his scientific treatises/
Also> if we nmy- regard as his^two little essays about the
aiitheHticity' of which there is ' some qu^tiori, he ascribed
such extraordinary influence to the moon as tomaintain that
the practice of bleeding should ' be r^^lated - by^ its phases,
arid wrbte-^with ' some hesitati6n lest he shoiild be- accused
of magic-^— ^n explanation of how to predict coming, disas*
ters by observing the time and direction of pfeals of thurtdef;^
Passing, over several centuries' during^ which judicial
astrology is very cc«ispieuous in the mathematical treatises
which formed the grfeater part • of the • scientific literature' of
the times,* we come at the close of the twelfth century to
theDe Naturis Rerum of Alexander Nedcam ( i i$yri2iy) .
Wfe find him ecstatically) musing over the consonance of >v
celestial harmony and associating . the seven planets with the
seven ' liberal arts and the seven gifts- of • thef Holy Spirit,*
as- if • believing .that there is- some occult virtue in that^ rium-
ber or some potent sympathy between < these material bodies
and sudi abstractions asbrandies of leSarriing arid genfcfrie
virtues; Descending from ■ the skies to thirigs' earthly-^the
transitiori is easy sirice he believes in the influence -saving
human free will, of the i^arifetson our 16wer creation *^-^he

'^'Dt NaiUrd Return, ch\ 245 De tempbfum Ratione, ch. 28: The
scieatific writing of Bede may be found in vol. vi of his works as
edited by J. A. Giles. London, 1843.

^ De Tonitruis ad Herefridum, and De MinuHone Sanguinis sive
Phlehotomia, Many spurious treatises were attribtrted to Bede * but
there- are some reasons for believing these genuine, / although they are
not named by Bede in the list of his writings whkh he gives in his
Ecclesiastical History. Giles included them in his edition after some
hesitation.

* For the predominance of astrology in the mathematics of the 9th,
ibth, nth and 12th centuries, cf, Histoire LittSraire, vol. v, p. 183;
vi, 9 ; vii, 137 ; ix, 197.

* De Naturis Rerum, bk. ii, ch. 173, and bk. i, ch. 7. Volume xxxiv of
The Chronicles and Memorial^' of Great Britain. (The Rolls Series.)

'^ Ibid., bk. i, ch. 7.

i6

MAGIC m INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

[i6

tells us that mugwort prevents the traveler from feeling
fatigue/ and that the Egyptian fig makes the wrinkles of
old age vanish and can tame the fiercest bulls once they are
gathered beneath its branches.* He describes fountains
with properties as marvelous as those of the herb or of the
tree." He tells of stones which, placed on the head of the
sleeping wife, provoke confession of marital infidelity,* or
which, extracted from the crop of a rooster and carried in
one's mouth, give victory in war." What is more, words
as well as plants and stones are found by the careful and
industrious investigator of nature to have great virtue, as
experiment shows beyond doubt.'*

Neckam, despite the fact that according to his editor,
Thomas Wright, he " not infrequently displays a taste for
experimental science," "^ was, after all, more of a moraliz-
ing compiler than anything else. But greater men than
Neckam, men who were interested in learning and science
for their own sake, men who knew more and wrote more,
still cherished beliefs of the same sort. There was Michael
Scot in the early years of the thirteenth century, the won-
der of the cultured court of Frederick II, perhaps that mon-
arch's tutor, the " Supreme Master " of Paris, the man
v^ho helped much to make the treasures of learning amassed

1 De Naturis Rerum, bk. ii, ch. 63.

2 Ibid.f bk. ii, ch. 80.

* Ibid., bk. ii, ch. 3 et seq.

^ Ibid., bk. ii, ch. 88. In chapter 87 he writes: " Chelidonius autem
ruf us portantes se gratissimos f acit ; niger vero gestatus optimum finem
negotiis imponit, et ad iras potentium sedandas idoneus est."

'^ Ibid,^ bk. ii, ch. 89.

^ Ibid., bk. ii, ch. 85. "In verbis et herbis et lapidibus multam esse
virtutem compertum est a diligentibus naturarum investigatoribus. Cer-
tissimum autem experimentum fidem dicto nostro facit."

■^ Preface, p. xii in vol. xxxiv of the Rolls Series.

17] BELIEF IN MAGIC 1 7

by the Arabs in Spain the common property of Latin Chris-
tendom, the introducer to Western Europe of a Latin ver-
sion of Averroes and of an enlarged Aristotle/ Scot com-
posed a primer of astrology for young scholars. His writ-
ings on alchemy show that he experimented in it not a
little. His Physionomia accepts the doctrine of signatures,
tells us that these signs on the outward body of the soul's
inner state are often discovered through dreams, and con-
tains a chapter giving an extended description of the rules
of augury — an art on which the author, though a Christian,
apparently bestowed his sanction. Prophetic verses fore-
telling the fate of several Italian cities have come down to
us under his name. A poem of Henri d'Avranches, written
in 1235-6, recalls to mind the fact that certain prophecies
concerning the emperor had been made by the then deceased
Michael Scot, whom the poet proceeds to call a scrutinizer
of the stars, an augur, a soothsayer, a veridicus vates, and
a second Apollo.^ A most interesting recipe for invoking
demons to instruct one in liberal arts is attributed to
Michael Scot in a manuscript collection of Occulta in the
Laurentian library. *

1 My information concerning Michael Scot is mainly derived from
his biography (Edinburgh, 1897) by Rev. J. Wood Brown, who has
studied the manuscript copies of Scofs works in various European
libraries and has succeeded in dispelling much of the uncertainty which
previously existed concerning the events of Scot's career and even the
dates of his life. Of Scot's works the Physionomia exists in printed
form; indeed, eighteen editions of it are said to have been issued be-
tween the years 1477 and 1660.

2 The poem is printed in Forschungen zur Deutschen Geschichte,
vol. xviii, (1878) p. 486.

• The part of the manuscript containing the experiment was written
between 1450 and 1500, Brown thinks, but purports to be a copy " from
a very ancient work.'' If spurious, its fabricator at least shows con-
siderable familiarity with Scot's life. See Brown, pp. 18-19. The re-
cipe is given in full in the appendix of Brown's book.

i8

MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

[i8

Later in the same century stands forth the famous figure
of Roger Bacon, the stout defender of mathematics and
physics against scholasticism. Some have ascribed to him
numerous important innovations in the reahn of natural
science and of the mechanical arts, and have regarded his
promulgation of the experimental method, guided by the
mathematical method, as the first herald note of that modern
science which was not destined really to appear for yet sev-
eral centuries. Yet he held that the alchemist, if given
sufficient time and money, could discover a way not only to
meet the state's expenses by converting baser metals into
gold, but also to prolong human existence beyond that limit
to which it can be drawn out by nature.^ Indeed these ob-
jects constituted two of the three examples he gave of the
great advantages to be gained from the pursuit of that ex-
perimental science which was to disprove and blot out all
magical nonsense.^

How far Bacon let the principles of astrology carry him
a citation or two will show. That a woman had succeeded
in living twenty years without eating was, he explained, no
miracle, but due to the fact that during that period some
constellation was able to reduce the concourse of the four
elements in her body to a greater degree of harmony than
they usually attain. * Nor is it health alone that the stars
control; they affect human character.* They implant in the
babe at birth good or evil dispositions, great or small tal-

1 De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magiae, ch. 7.
Contained in the Appendix of vol. xv of the Rolls Series, edited by
J. S. Brewer, London, 1859.

2 Opus Maius, vol. ii, pp. 204-221. Edited by J. H. Bridges, Oxford,
1897-1900. On page 210 et seq. Bacon gives an elaborate recipe for an
elixir vitae.

* Opus Minus, Rolls Series, vol. xv, pp. 373-4.

* Bridges, Opus Maius, vol. i, pp. 137-139.

iq] belief in magic 19

ents. Human free will may either better these innate ten-
dencies through God's grace or modify them for the worse
by yielding to Satan's temptings; but in general the stars
so far prevail that there are different laws and customs and
national traits under different quarters of the heavens/
Nay more, astrology offers proof of the superiority of Chris-
tianity to other religions and gives insight into the nature
of Antichrist.^

As one might surmise from Bacon's belief in the potent
effect of sidereal emanations, he makes much of the theory
that every agent sends forth its own virtue and species into
external matter. This leads him to accept fascination as a
fact. Just as Aristotle tells that in some localities mares
become pregnant by the mere odor of the stallions, and as
Pliny relates that the basilisk kills by a glance, so the witch
by the vapor from her bleary eye draws her victims on to
destruction. In short, "Man can project virtue and species
outside himself, the more since he is nobler than all corporeal
things, and especially because of the virtue of the rational
soul." * Hence the great effects possible from spoken words
or written characters ; although one must beware of falling
into the absurdities and abominations of the magicians.
Bacon, moreover, was like Scot a believer in the doctrine
of signatures.*

Other men of the same period prominent in science who
held similar beliefs we can scarcely stop to mention. There
was Vincent de Beauvais, the great encyclopedist, and Ber-

^ Compendium Studii, Rolls Series, vol. xv, pp. 421-422.
2 Bridges, Opus Maius, vol. i, pp. 253-269.

* De SecretiSy ch. 3, discusses this question of fascination and also the
power of words and of the human soul. In regard to characters and
incantations, see De Secretis, ch. 2, and the Opus Tertium, which is also
contained in vol. xv of the Rolls Series, ch. 26.

* Opus Tertium, ch. 27,

20

MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

[20

nard Gordon, a physician of Montpellier and a medical
writer of consideraible note, who nevertheless recommended
the use of a magic formula for the treatment of epilepsy.^
There was Albertus Magnus with his trust in such wonder-
ful powers of stones as to cure ulcers, counteract potions,
conciliate human hearts, and win battles; and his theory
that ligatures and suspensions, and gems carved with proper
images possess similar strange virtues.^ There was Arnald
of Villanova who propounded such admirable doctrines as
that a physician ought first of all to understand the chief
functions of life and chief organs of the body and that the
science of particular things is the foundation of all knowl-
edge, and yet who believed in astrological medicine, wrote
on oneiromancy and interpreted dreams, translated treatises
on incantations, ligatures and other magic devices, and com-
posed a book on the Tetragrammaton or ineffable name of
Jehovah.*

That marvelous power of words — especially of the divine
names of angels and of the Supreme Deity — ^which we may
suppose Arnald to have touched upon in his Tetragram-
maton, was discussed at length by a series of scholars at the
close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century
whose names are most familiar to the student of those
times. These men pushed the practice of allegorical inter-
pretation of sacred writings, which had been in constant
vogue among religious and theological writers from the days

^ " Caspar fert myrram, thus Melchoir, Balthasar aurum.
Haec tria qui secum portabit nomina regum
Solvitur a morbo Christi pietate caduco."

Hist, Litt, val. xxv, p. 327.
2 See Liber Mineralium. Opera Omnia, ed. Borgnet (1890), vol. v,
page 23 et seq.

* Two good accounts of Arnald are those in the Histoire Litteraire,
vol. xxviii and Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. iii, pp. 52-57. Older
accounts are generally very misleading.

2 1 ] BELIEF IN MAGIC 2 1

of the early Christian Fathers, to the extreme of discover-
ing sublime secrets not only by regarding every incident
and object in Scripture as a parable, but by treating the
text itself as a cryptogram. Not only, like Isidore, did they
see in every numerical measurement in the Bible mystic
meaning, but in the very letters they doubted not there was
hidden that knowledge by which one might gain control of
all the processes of the universe; nay, penetrate through
the ten sephiroth to the unspeakable and infinite source of
all. For our visible universe is but the reflected image of
an invisible, and each has subtle and practically unlimited
power over the other. The key to that power is words.
Such were the doctrines held by Pico Delia Mirandola
(1463-1494) who asserted that no science gave surer proof
of Christ's divinity than magical and cabalistic science ; ^
such were the doctrines of the renowned humanist, John
Reuchlin, who^connected letters in the sacred text with in-
dividual angels; ^ of Henry Cornelius Agrippa (i486- 1535)
who, inspired by Reuchlin's De verbe mirifico and De arte
cabalistica, declared that whoever knew the true pronuncia-
tion of the name Jehovah had " the world in his mouth ;" *
of Trithemius from whom Paracelsus is said to have ac-
quired the " Cabala of the spiritual, astral and material
worlds.'' *

Moreover, the writings of men primarily devoted to
science continued through the sixteenth and on into the

^ J. M. Rigg, Giovanni Pico Delia Mirandola, London, 1890, pp. viii-x.

2 Janssen, History of the German People, vol. iii, p. 45, of the English
translation by A. M. Christie (1900).

•Henry Morley, Life of Agrippa von Nettesheim (London, 1856),
vol, i, p. 79. This biography includes a full and instructive outlmc
of Agrippa's work on Occult Philosophy.

* A. E. Waite, Hermetical and Alchemistical Writings of Paracelsus,
vol, i, p. xii.

22 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [22

seventeenth century to contain much the same occult the-
ories that Michael Scot, Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus
had accepted and discussed. Jerome Cardan, one of the
most prominent men of his time in mathematics and medi-
cine — indeed, the discoverer of new processes in the former
science — nevertheless believed in a strong attraction and
sympathy between the heavenly bodies and our own, cast
horoscopes and wrote on judicial astrology. In his Arith-
metic he treated of the marvelous properties of certain
numbers ; in other writings he credulously discussed demons,
ghosts, incantations, divination and chiromancy. His thir-
teen books on metoposcopy explain how to tell a person's
character, ability and destiny by a minute examination of
the lines on different portions of the body and by warts.
He owned a selenite which he believed prevented sleep and
a jacinth to which he attributed an opposite influence.^

The vagaries of Paracelsus are notorious, and yet he was
far more than a mere quack. Tycho Brahe (i 546-1 601)
was a faithful follower of experimental method. He saw
that the science of the stars could amount to little imless
based on a mass of correct observations, and was one of
the first to devote his life to that foundation of patient and
systematic drudger)'^ on which the great structure of modem
science is being reared. His painstaking endeavor to have
accurate instruments and his care to make allowance for
possible error were the marks, rare enough in those days,
of the true scientist. Yet he made many an astrological
prognostication, and was, as his biographer puts it, " a
perfect son of the sixteenth century, believing the imi~
verse to be woven together by mysterious connecting-
threads which the aKitanplation of the stars or of the

^ For Cardan, sec the biography in two volumes by Henry Morley,
London, 1854, and that in one volmne by W. G. Waters^ London. 1898L

23] BELIEF IN MAGIC 23

dements of nature might unravel, and thereby lift the veil
of the future.*' ^ He also dabbled in alchemy, believed in
relations of occult sympathy between "the ethereal and
elementary worlds," and filled his mind with the teachings
of Hermes Trismegistus, Geber, Arnald of Villanova, Ray-
mond Lullius, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Para-
celsus.

Finally, even Francis Bacon, famed as the draughtsman
of the chart which henceforth guided explorers in the
domain of science, thought that there was considerable value
in physiognomy and the interpretation of natural dreams,
though the superstition and phantasies of later ages had
debased those subjects;^ and in divination if not "con- .
ducted by blind authority." * He said that by a reformed /
astrology one might predict plagues, famines, wars, sedi-
tions, sects, great human migrations and " all great dis-
turbances or innovations in both natural and civil affairs." *

Such are the beliefs which for a long time pervaded the
thought and learning of Europe; beliefs of the widespread
acceptance of which we have noted but a few striking illus-
trations. They constitute a varied and formidable class of
convictions. There was the notion that from such things
as the marks upon one's body, or from one's dreams, or
from peals of thunder, flight of birds, entrails of sacrificial
victims and the movements of the stars, we can foretell the
future. There was the assumption that certain precious
stones, certain plants and trees and fountains, certain ani-
mals or parts of animals have strange and wonderful vir-
tues. There was the idea that man, too, possesses marvd-

^J. L. R Dreyer, Tycho Brake. A Picture of ScienMc Life and
Work in the Sixteenth Century (Edinburg'h, 1890), p. 56. A valu-
able book.

2 De Augtnentis Scientiarum, bk. iv, ch. i.

• Ibid., bk. iv, ch. 3. * Ibid, bk. iii, oh. 4.

24 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [24

ous powers to the extent that he can fascinate and bewitch
his fellows. Nor should we forget the attribution to the
heavenly bodies of an enormous influence over minerals
and vegetation, over human health and character, over
national constitutions and customs, even over religious
movements. We find this notion of occult virtue extended
to things without physical reality: to words, to numbers,
to written characters and formulae. It is applied to certain
actions and ways of doing things : to " ligatures and sus-
pensions," for instance. Then there was the belief that
wonders may be wrought by the aid of demons, and that
incantations, suffumigations, and the like are of great value
in invoking spirits. Finally, there was a vague general
notion that not only are the ethereal and elementary worlds
joined by occult sympathy, but that all parts of the universe
are somehow mystically connected, and that perhaps a single
magic key may be discovered by which we may become
masters of the entire universe.

How shall we classify these beliefs ? What shall we call
them? What is their meaning, what their origin and
cause? As for classification, it is easy to suggest names
which partially apply to some of these notions, or ade-
quately characterize them individually. The art of signa-
tures, oneiromancy, augury, divination, astrology, alchemy,
the Cabala, sorcery, and necromancy are some designations
which at once come to mind. But no one of them is at all
adequate as a class name for all these beliefs and the prac-
tices which they involve, taken together. Are not these
notions, nevertheless, closely allied; is there not an inti-
mate relation between them all ? And is not " magic " a
term which will include them all and denote the general
subject, the philosophy and the art, of which they all are
branches ?

True, many of the holders of the beliefs above enumer-

25] BELIEF IN MAGIC 25

ated declaimed against " magic." ^ But sometimes fear of
being accused of magic was their very reason for so doing.
Bede had such a fear when he treated of divination by-
thunder. Roger Bacon took suspicious care to insist that
his theories had nothing to do with magic, which he de-
clared was for the most part a mere pretense and could
bring marvels to pass only by diabolical assistance.^ The
writer of the Speculum Astronomiae — ^probably Albertus
Magnus — found it necessary to write a treatise to distin-
guish books of necromancy from works on "astronomy,"
i. e,y astrology.^ Coming to a later age, we find Agrippa
frankly owning his trust in magic, and including under it,
in his three books of Occult Philosophy , practically all the
beliefs that we have mentioned. For him magic embraced
the fields of nature, mathematics and theology. Indeed,
men of his day and of the century following displayed a
tendency to stretch the term to include true science. He
himself called magic " the acme of all philosophy." Gio-
vanni Battista della Porta (i 540-161 5), not it is true with-
out considerable justification, called his encyclopedic work on

1 Bodin for instance condemned " magic " m his De Magorum Dae-
monomania (Paris, 1581).

2 Bridges, Opus Maius, vol. i, p. 241. See too the De Secretis Operi-
bus Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magiae. Rolls Series, vol. xv,
appendix.

* Spec. Astron.f ch. 17. Albertus Magnus, Opera Omnia, ed. Borgnet
(1890), vol. X, pp. 629 et seq. And he finally came to the conclusion
that " concerning books of necromancy the better judgment — ^prejudice
aside — seems to be that they ought rather to be preserved than de-
stroyed. For the time is perchance near at hand in which, for reasons
which I now suppress, it will be advantageous to consult them occasion-
ally. Nevertheless, let their inspectors abstain from abuse of them."
Ch. 17.

Similarly Roger Bacon, in his De Secretis, ch. 3, after mentioning
books of magic to be eschewed, remarked that many books classed as
magic were not such buit contained worthy wisdom.

26 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [^S

nature Natural Magic .^ Lord Bacon chose to understand
magic " in its ancient and honorable significance " among*
the Persians as " a sublimer wisdcwtn or a knowledge of
universal nature." •He said that as physics, investigating*
efficient and material causes, produced mechanics, so meta-
physics, studying into forms, produced magic*

Apparently, then, magic has a broad significance and a
long history. The word itself takes us back to the Magi
of ancient Persia; the thing it represents is older yet. It
will form the theme of our next chapter, where we shall
discuss its history and its meaning, and then the partic-
ular significance of those beliefs accepted by men of learn-
ing which have been enumerated in the present chapter.

* Magiae Naturalis Libri XX. Lyons, 1651.

* De Augmentis, bk. iii, ch. 4.

CHAPTER II

Magic: Its Origins and Relations to Science

To men of the past — how long ago does not at present
matter — ^magic meant far more than the performance for
their amusement of clever tricks, which however puzzling
they knew well enough were based upon illusion and de-
ception. There was a real magic for them.

This faith in the reality of magic was not, moreover,
merely the outcome of men's belief in the existence of evil
spirits, in the power of those spirits to work changes in
matter or to predict the future, and in man's power to guin
their services. We sometimes speak of magic and necro-
mancy as if they were identical, and mediaeval writers often
did the same thing, but such is not the case. If we but con-
sider the meaning of the word " magic " when used as an
adjective, we perceive that thus to restrict its scope as a
noun is incorrect. What is a magic cloak, for instance?
It is simply a cloak possessing properties which cloaks in
general do not possess and which we are surprised to find
in cloaks. Most cloaks keep us warm or improve our per-
sonal appearance; this cloak makes us invulnerable and in-
visible. A demon or a fairy may have endowed the cloak
with these extraordinary qualities, but that is a secondary
consideration. What makes the garment a mag^c cloak is
the fact that it has such properties, no matter where or how
it got them. Or what is a magic change ? Is it merely a
change wrought by spirits good or evil? By no means.
27] 7^

28 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [28

It IS any change with characteristics and results which we
do not expect nor usually see in changes. In short, magic
is pra&tematural rather than supernatural.

Thus we find the existence of magic in the earliest period
of human thought generally assumed by anthropologists,
but some writers deny that man always has believed in
supernatural beings. He first, they tell us, had a vague
notion that by propitiating or by coercing nature he might
secure for himself happiness ; and that if anything external
was to have power over the workings of the natural struc-
ture, it must be man, for both gods and God were yet un-
known. Only gradually, they hold, through his belief in
tree-spirits, through his devotion to plants or fetishes made
sacred by their supposed efficacy in serving human wishes,
perhaps, too, through his attitude toward human beings
whose reputation for skill in magic finally led to deification,
did man come to a belief in more or less divine beings and
turn to them for the power and the happiness which in his
savage and untutored impotency he had been unable to vv^in
by his own efforts.^ Then only would the performance of
magic by the aid of supernatural beings commence.

There is another misleading idea which we should avoid.
Fairy tales and romances picture magicians to us as few
in number, adepts in a secret art. Instinctively, moreover,
looking as we do upon magic as a mere delusion, we are
prone to regard it as the creation of the popular imagina-
tion, and to believe that what magicians there were outside
of the ordinary man's imagination were a few imposters
who took advantage of his fancies, or a few self-deceived

1 This view is set forth at length in J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough
(3 vols., London, 1900). The book also furnishes many illustrations
of the magic of primitive man. Mr. Frazer holds that " religion " sup-
planted magic and is in turn itself being supplanted by science. His
definition of religion would probably not be generally accepted.

29] ORIGINS AND RELATIONS TO SCIENCE 29

dreamers whose minds such fancies had led astray. This
is a superficial view. It does not explain how the ordinary
man came to imagine the existence of magic. Magicians
in the true sense were no mere imaginary order existent only
in the minds of men, nor a profession of dreamers and im-
posters. Magic was not the outright invention of imaginzi^r ' /
tion ; it was primitive man's philosophy, it was his attitude to^j
ward nature. It was originally not the exercise of supposed '
innate, marvelous powers by a favored few nor a group of \
secret doctrines or practices known to but a few ; it was a j
body of ideas held by men universally and which, during \
their savage state at least, they were forever trying to put \
into practice. Everybody was a magician.

To understand magic, then, we should consider this atti-
tude of primitive man — ^I use the word primitive in no nar-
row sense — and should try to picture to ourselves what his
attitude would be. It is a safe assumption that he would
interpret the world about him according to his own sensa-
tions, feeling? and motives. Whether he looked upon na-
ture at large or in detail, he would in all probability regard
it not as an inexorable machine run in accordance with
universal and immutable laws, but as a being or world of
beings much like himself — fickle, changing, capable of be-
ing influenced by inducements or deterred by threats, benefi-
cent or hostile according as satisfied or offended by treat-
ment received. To make life go as he wished, he must
be able to please and propitiate or to coerce these forces
outside himself.^ In this endeavor his faculty of associa-

^ Alfred Maury, in the introduction to his La Magie et I'astrologie
dans Vantiquiti et au moyen age, (Paris, i860), expresses a practically
identical view and has the conception of magic gradually fading away
before the advance of science. (See also the article on " Magic" in the
Encyclopedia Brittanica, 9th edition.)

Maury's work is not, however, as satisfactory as one is led to think

30 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [30

tion probably led him to conclude that things resembling
each other or having any seeming connection must be re-
lated by strong bonds of sympathy and have power over
each other. Since he had already attributed human char-
acteristics to matter, he naturally now observed no distinc-
tion between the animate and the inanimate, the material
and the spiritual. A wooden image might be used to affect
the fate of a human being, or the utterance of alluring and
terrifying sounds to produce change in unfeeling and un-
responsive matter.

Moreover, as man observed the world about him, he
would note many a phenomenon in nature which he could
explain only by assuming strange and subtle influences.
There was, for instance, the magnet, so different from
other stones ; the hot spring, so different from other waters ;
the action of electricity — still a mystery. Such things, too,
as a calf with five legs, a dream, a sneeze, appealed to him
as peculiar and striking, and perplexed him. He thought
that they must have some important significance. His
attempt to explain all such phenomena generally led him
into magic.

from reading its introduction. Although he has defined magic almost
in so many words as the attitude of primitive man towards the universe,
he himself interprets magic much more narrowly when he comes to
write his book proper, as indeed its title, Magic and Astrology, suggests.
In short the thought that science and magic may at one time have
mingled does not seem to impress him, and his work is of little aid to
one considering our present subject. For instance, he cites Pliny only
as an opponent of magic Maury's work, moreover, comprising in its
historical portion but a little over two hundred pages — and these nearly
half filled by foot-notes— can hardly be regarded as more than a brief
narrative sketch of the subject.

Considerable erudition is displayed in Maury's references, especially
those to Greek and Roman writers, and from page 208 to 211 Maury
gives a good bibliography of some of the chief secondary works dealing
with magic. More was written upon the subject shortly ibefore his time
than has been since.

31 ] ORIGINS AND RELATIONS TO SCIENCE 31

Man often had to decide between two or more courses of
action, apparently equally pleasing and advantageous or
displeasing and disadvantageous. Should he turn to the
right or to the left; should he begin his journey to-day or
to-morrow? The thought probably came to him that one
of these directions, one of these days, would in the end
prove more advantageous than the other, though at present
he could see no difference between them. One must be
lucky, the other unlucky. This belief in lucky times, places
and actions was magic. For such times, places and actions
were magical as truly as the cloak that is unlike other cloaks
or the change that differs from other changes.

Akin to man's desire to discover what course of action
would bring him' good luck was the longing he doubtless
had to know the future; a knowledge which would be as
interesting as those tales of his ancestor's doings in which
he delighted, and of more practical use. As he had no diffi-
culty in granting to matter spiritual qualities or in subject-
ing to. trivial material influences mind and soul without
power of resistance, so now he sought in the present sure
signs of his own future. Such indications seemed to him to
be found not only in dreams, which indeed had some con-
nection with his personality, but also in such things as the
flight of birds or the movements of the stars. He often did
more than assign magic powers to the heavenly bodies;
often he worshiped them as gods. His effort thus to learn
the future from inadequate and irrelevant present phenom-
ena was divination or magic.

These notions of primitive man do not exhaust the field
of magic. As he became educated, he would extend the
attribution of magic properties to such things as numbers
and written characters or formulae. His original ideas
might be elaborated or refined. • But already he accepted the
principles upon which a belief in magic founds itself. These

32 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [32

principles were evidently common property. Of course
some men would come to surpass others in their knowledge
of the supposed bonds of sympathy between diflFerent things,
or of ludcy objects, seasons and methods, of ways to coax
and control natural forces, of the meaning of portents and
of means to predict the future In the progress of time the
finer mysteries of the art might become the monopoly of a
priesthood. But everybody believed in magic; everybody
understood something about it.

To attempt to define magic further than has been done
in our description of the notions of primitive man is like
trying to embrace a phantom. Mag^c rested upon man's
conjecture of the characteristics and processes of nature,
not on a knowledge of nature correctly deduced from ob-
servation and experiment. As one would expect, there
went with these mistaken notions a fantasticalness both in
reasoning and in practical procedure. The follower of
magic is apt to be on the watch not for facts or laws, but
for hidden mysteries ; he is fond of ceremonial and symbols ;
he enjoins upon himself and his fellows the necessity of
secrecy in their operations and mysticism in their writings.
Again, magic is, as has been said, praetematural ; its out-
come is to be marvelous. It assumes the existence of won-
derful properties in various objects and of wonderful bonds
of S3anpathy between different things. Finally, we should
remember that man always is a factor in magic. His knowl-
edge, skill or power is always essential to the performance
of a feat of magic. Even when demons do the deed, they
must be invoked. A miracle may be contrary to natural
law but it is not magic, for man is not the cause of it.
Even if wrought in answer to his prayer, the miracle is not
magic, for the gods answer only if they dioose But the
magic formula compels the desired marvel; by it man co-
erces nature or even deity.

33] ORIGINS AND RELATIONS TO SCIENCE 33

Such are some of the chief characteristics of magic. Yet
with these granted, it remains, like superstition or religion,
a vague term at best. The reader may disagree with me
as to exactly what beliefs and practices should be included
under it, and it is indeed a nice question just where magic
begins and ends. Much of alchemy, for example, was noth-
ing but chemistry of a rude sort, and perhaps even its the-
ories that metals may be transmuted and life greatly pro-
longed will some day prove to have had much truth in
them. On the other hand, alchemy was based to a consid-
erable extent on a belief that plants, animals and minerals
have properties and powers which they cannot have: and if
we ever do succeed in making gold or putting off old age,
it is quite certain that such a consummation will never be
accomplished by the fantastic methods which alchemists
usually employed. Similarly we shall see that the practice
of allegorical interpretation of past writings and the Pyth-
agorean doctrine of numbers, which perhaps at first thought
one would not regard as magic at all, nevertheless bear at
least some resemblance to it. But after all our thesis is not
to establish a certain definition for the word " magic," or
to prove that such and such ideas and acts are magical.
A name signifies little, and the word magic has had too
many different meanings in different periods and for differ-
ent men to allow any one to assert with confidence that he
has found an absolutely correct definition. I employ the
word simply because it seems the most convenient, most in-
telligible and most justifiable tenri tor denoting a number
of beliefs which I believe are all intimately related and
which are the marks of a certain attitude towards the world.

So much for the definition of magic and for the nature
of its origin. But the discussion of these two points does
not fully explain the meaning of the beliefs which were
illustrated in our first chapter. We have yet to bring out

34 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [34

the full significance of the presence of such notions in the
minds of mediaeval thinkers and scientists.

It was stated above that the outcome of mag^c is praeter-
natural, marvelous; but this statement, while in one sense
perfectly true, requires some qualification. Perhaps to in-
experienced primitive man the results which he wished to
accomplish or the crude theories on which he based his
operations seemed nothing remarkable. Perhaps incanta-
tion seemed to him the natural way to bring rain, and sor-
cery the sole cause of disease. But as time went on and
observation taught men, it must have been impressed upon
their minds that either the events they sought to produce, or
the methods by which they sought to produce them, were a
little out of the ordinary, although of the possibility of the
events and of the validity of the methods they still remained
\ convinced. If we wish to sum up the whole history of
magic in a sentence, we may say that men first regarded
magic as natural, then as marvelous, then as impossible and
{ absurd. Evidently then magic is subjective, as anything-
I false must be. To-day in the thought of educated and sen-
sible people it is limited in actual significance to stage illu-
sions ; once it was a universal attitude towards the universe.
As one' false hypothesis after another was superseded by-
true notions, the content of magic narrowed in men's
minds until at last it became an acknowledged deception.
Meanwhile its mistaken premises and strange proceedings
first mingled with and then vanished into science and scien-
tific methods.

This, then, is the significance of the beliefs of which we
were speaking in the first chapter. They are phenomena in
that union — or struggle — of magic and science which
marked the decay of the former and the development of the
latter. As such, they warn us not to picture a magician to
ourselves as armed with a wand, clad in solemn robes,

35] ORIGINS AND RELATIONS TO SCIENCE 35

and attended by a black cat. They warn us, on the other
hand, not to regard the learned students of nature, mathe-
matics and medicine in ages past as modem scientists in
mind and spirit, who were merely handicapped by such ob-
stacles as crude instruments and want of data. We per-
ceive the anachronism involved in explaining away as mere
passing fancies, personal eccentricities or anomalous beliefs
the superstitious or bizarre notions of those to whom' tra-
dition has accorded great fame. We are warned to con-
sider carefully whether such notions were not ingrained in
the very being of those men and characteristic of their whole
mental attitude.

Science and magic are very unlike, but even the dis-
tinction between East and West varies according to where
the speaker takes his stand. We have come to regard
science as abstract truth, scientific investigation as neces-
sarily correct and sensible; we forget that science has a
past. In their actual history science and magic were not
unassociated. Scientists might accept magical doctrines
and magic might endeavor to classify its fancies and to
account for them by natural causes. Roger Bacon could
regard the attainment of magical results as the great end of
experimental science. Francis Bacon could place magic in
the same category with metaphysics and physics.

It is with this mingling of magic and science — or more
broadly of magic with learning in general — in the history
of our Western world that this essay has to do. It is a
theme of no narrow interest. Such ideas as have been
cited, not only held by the most learned men of the times
but incorporated in their scientific and philosophical systems
— in so far as they had any — deserve consideration in the
history of science and philosophy as well as in that of
magic, or in an investigation of the mental make-up of
the men of the past.

36 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [36

While, however, the place of magic in the intellectual
history of Europe is our general subject, the present essay-
is far from being an attempt at a complete treatment of
it. The aim is rather to illustrate that theme by a survey
of learning during the period of the Roman Empire, when
the divers threads of the thought and knowledge of the
ancient world were to some extent united. The prominence
of magic in mediaeval science is perhaps better known and
more generally admitted. Accordingly this essay will take
for granted, except in so far as it has been illustrated in
our first chapter, the presence of magic in mediaeval learn-
ing, and will try to show that magical doctrines, credulity,
mysticism, and love of the marvelous were not traits pecu-
liar to mediaeval thought, but that in this respect (as in
others) there was close resemblance, probably strict con-
tinuity between the Roman world and later times. It was
largely in order to bring out this resemblance, continuity
and influence that the beliefs of various writers in the
Middle Ages and early modern times were given in the
first chapter. Let the reader compare them with those
notions of men in the Roman Empire which will pres-
ently be set forth. If we are justified in thus regarding-
the Roman world as summarizing ancient science and
helping to explain mediaeval thought, we evidently, in tak-
ing our stand in that period secure a broad prospect and
ought to obtain a fair idea of the place of magic in the
intellectual history of Europe. In defining the field which
we are to cover, it should be further said that Chris-
tian thought will not come into our discussion, since it did
not greatly influence science and other secular learning until
the close of the Roman Empire. Lastly, it should be clearly
understood that we are here concerned with magic only as
connected with science and with learning — only as accepted
by educated men.

CHAPTER III

Pliny's Natural History

We should have to search long before finding a better
starting-point for the consideration of the union of magic
with the science of the Roman Empire and of the way in
which that union influenced the Middle Ages than Pliny's
Natural History. Its encyclopedic character affords a
bird's-eye view of our entire subject. Its varied contents
suggest practically all the themes of our discussion in suc-
ceeding chapters. Chronologically considered, it is satis-
factory as an introduction, since it appeared in the early
part of the Empire (77 a. d.).

I. The character of the work. — Pliny's treatise is far
more than what we understand by a " Natural History."
It is an attempt to cover the whole field of science; rerum
natura is its subject.^ This, as Pliny says, is a task which
no single Greek or Roman has before attempted. He tells
us that he treats of some 20,000 topics gleaned from the
perusal of about 2,000 volumes, with the addition of many
facts not contained in previous works and only recently

^ " Praeterea iter est, non trita auctoribus via, nee qua peregrinari
animus expetat. Nemo apud nos qui idem temptaverit, nemo apud
Graecos qui unus omnia ea tractaverit." From liis dedication to the
Emperor Vespasian. C. Plinii Secundi, Naturalis Historiae Libri xxxvii.
Ludovicus Janus, Lipsiae, 1870. 5 vols, in 3. I shall refer to passages
by the division into chapters found in the editions of Hardouin, Valpy,
Lemaire and Ajasson. Three modes of division are indicated in the
edition of Janus. There is an English translation of the Natural His-
tory, with an introductory essay, by J. Bostock and H. T. Riley, Lon-
don, 1855, 6 vols. (Bohn Library).

37] 37

38 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [38

brought to light/ At first thought, then, the Natural His-
tory, vast in its scope and constituting a summary of the
views of previous authorities, would seem the best sing-le
example of the science of the classical world. The fact
that it touches upon many of the varieties and illustrates
most of the characteristics of magic makes it the more fit-
ting a starting-point for us. Indeed, Pliny makes frequent
mention of the Magi, and in the opening chapters of his
thirtieth book gives the most important extant discussion of
magic by an ancient writer.

It is true, however, that Pliny does not seem to have
been a man of much scientific training and experience. He
said himself that his days were taken up with the perform-
ance of public duties, and that consequently his scientific
labors were largely carried on in the evening hours. ^ Prob-
ably we should regard his book as little more than a com-
pilation, and perhaps no very judicious compilation at that,
in view of his maxim that there is no book so bad but that
some good may be got from it.® Perhaps we may not un-
justly picture him to ourselves as collecting his material in
a rather haphazard fashion; as not always aware of the
latest theories or discoveries; as occasionally citing a fan-
tastic writer instead of a more sober one; or as quoting-
incorrectly statements which his limited scientific knowledge

1 " Viginti milia rerum dignarum cura ... ex lectione voluminum
circiter duum milium, quorum pauca admodum studiosi attingunt
propter secretum materiae, ex exquisitis auctoribus centum inclusimus
xxxvi voluminibus, adiectis rebus plurimis quas aut ignoraverant priores
aut postea invenerat vita." Also from the dedication. Pliny uses more
than one hundred writers, however.

2 " Homines enim sumus et occupati officiis, subcisivisque temporibus
ista curamus, id est nocturnis, ne quis vestris putet cessatum horis."
From the dedication.

* Pliny the Younger to Macer in his Letters^ bk. iii, ep. 5, ed. Keil,
Leipzig, 1896.

\ Am^Jj-n *■'

39] FLINT S NATURAL HISTORY 39

prevented him from comprehending. Perhaps, too, he de-
rived some of his data directly from popular report and
superstition. Certainly to us to-day his work seems a dis-
orderly and indiscriminate conglomeration of fact and
legend on all sorts of subjects — disorderly, in that its
author does not seem to have made any effort to sift his
material, to compare and arrange his facts, even in his own
mind ; indiscriminate, in that Pliny seems to lack any stand-
ard of judgment, between the true and the false, and to
deem almost nothing too improbable, silly or indelicate to
be mentioned. Ought we to consider such a work as truly
representative of the beliefs of preceding centuries, or as
an example of the best educated thought and science of
its author's own age? This is a question which we must
consider.

Yet as we read Pliny's pages we feel that he possessed
elements of greatness. If he was equipped with little scien-
tific training or experience, we should remember that little
training or experience was necessary to deal with the science
of those days. At least he sacrificed his life in an effort to
investigate natural phenomena. Moreover, his faults were
probably to a great extent common to his age. The ten-
dency to regard anything written as of at least some value
did not begin with him. Material had often before been
collected in a haphazard manner. Lewes, in his book on
the science of Aristotle, has described with truth even the
famous History of Animals as unclassified in arrangement
and careless in the selection of material.^ Many of Pliny's
marvelous assertions and absurd remedies purport to be from

1 Geo. H. Lewes, Aristotle; a Chapter from the History of Science^
London, 1864. Lewes also holds that while Aristotle often dwelt upon

I

the value of experiment and the necessity of having a mass of facts
before making general assertions, he in practice frequently jumped at
conclusions.

40 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [40

the works of men of note, although possibly he was some-
times deceived by spurious writings. He frequently g^ves us
to understand that he himself intends to maintain a cautious
and critical frame of mind, and he makes great pretensions
to immunity from that credulousness of human nature over
which he will occasionally smile or philosophize.^ When
we take up Aristotle's History of Animals and Seneca's
Natural Questions, it will become evident that Pliny^s
" science " was not very different in quality from that of
the Greeks or from that of his own age. If he seldom
gives us a clear-cut or complete exposition of a subject, it
is probably because there was seldom one to be found. If
he seems in a chronic statp of mental confusion and inco-
herency, it is because his task staggered him. His work was
by its nature so far impersonal that we can attribute its
defects only in part to his personality.

On the whole, then, we probably shall not be greatly mis-
led if we regard the Historia Naturalis as a sort of epitome
of what men had believed about nature in the past or did
believe in Pliny's own day. The author may not have por-
trayed past and present thought at their best but he por-
trayed them, and that in detail. " The greatest gull of an-
tiquity " ^ was the Boswell of ancient science.

^ Nat, Hist, bk. xxvi, di. 9. "Mirum esset profecto hucusquc pro-
feotam credulitatem antiquorum saluberrimis ortam initiis, si in ulla
re modum humana ingenia novissent atque non banc ipsam medicinam ab
Asclepiade repertam probaturi suo loco assemus evectam ultra Magos
etiam. Haec est omni in re animorum condicio, ut a necessariis orsa
primo cuncta pervenerint ad nimium." Cf. also bk. xxviii, ch. i.
" Quamquam et ipsi consensu prope iudicata eligere laboravimus potius-
que curae rerum quam copiae institimus." In Pliny's dedication, bow-
ever, occurs a sentence which gives one the impression that be felt
rather in duty bound to accept tradition. "Res ardua, vetustis novi-
tatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obseletis nitorem, obscuris lucem, fas-
tiditis gratiam, dubiis Mem, omnibus vero naturam et naturae suae

omnia."

2 Quoted without reference by E. Eggleston, The Transit of Civiliza-

41 ] PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 41

Pliny makes almost as good a representative of mediaeval
science as of that of the Roman world, and thus well illus-
trates the influence which the one had upon the other. In-
deed not only is the Natural History just the sort of work
that delighted the Middle Ages, but Pliny seems to have
exerted a considerable direct influence on writers down
through the sixteenth century. Isidore of Seville practi-
cally copied his unfavorable comments on the magi and his
discussion of the powers of stones.^ Bede seems to have
owed a good deal to him. Alcuin openly praised that
" most devoted investigator of nature." ^ Roger Bacon
quoted him; the Natural History was a mine whence
Agrippa dug much of the material for his Occult Philosophy
and to which Porta seems equally indebted in his Natural
Magic.

II. Pliny s discussion of magic. — Before illustrating
Pliny's combination of magical lore with true and sane
statements about nature, we should consider his discussion
of what he was pleased to call magic; for just as he prided
himself upon his freedom from excessive credulity in the
abstract, so in regard to magic in particular he seems to
have flattered himself that his position was quite different
from- what it actually was.

Hon from England to America in the Seventeenth Century** (N. Y.,
1901), p. 16. This interesting and valuable book contains much ma-
terisft illustrative of the science and superstitions of the times.

1 Etymologies, bk. xvi, Migne, vol. Ixxxii.

2 Alcuini Epistolae, 103, vol. vi, pp. 431-432, of Bibliotheca Rerum
Germanicarum, ed. Philip Jaff6, Berlin, 1873. "Vel quid acutius quam
quod naturalium rerum divitissimus [or devotissimus] inventor, Plinius
Secundus, de caelestium siderum ratione exposuit, investigari valet ?" In
Migne's Patrologia Latina, vol. c, col. 278, the letter is given as num-
ber 85. For other references to Pliny by earlier writers, see Bibliothique
Latine-Frangaise, C. L. F. Panckoucke, vol. cvi which forms the open-
ing volume of Pliny's work in that set

42 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [42

Pliny did have, however, a fairly clear idea of the exten-
sive scope of magic as well as of its great age and currency.
Not only did he declare that of all known arts it had exerted
the greatest influence in every land and in almost every ag'e,
but " no one," he said, " should wonder that its authority
has been very great, since it alone has embraced and com-
bined into one the three other subjects which appeal most
powerfully to man's mind." ^ For magic had invaded the
domain of religion and had also made astrology a part of
itself,^ while " no one doubts that it originally ^rang from
medicine and crept in under the show of promoting health
as a loftier and more holy medicine." * Indeed, he thinks
that the development of magic and of medicine have been
parallel * and that the latter is now in imminent danger of
being overwhelmed by the follies of magic which have made
men doubt whether plants possess any medicinal properties
at all.*' Pliny, moreover, sees the connection of magic with
the lore of the magi of Persia. Indeed, " magus " is his
only word for a magician. But this does not lead him to
admit what some persons — ^the philosopher Eudoxus, for
instance — ^have asserted, that magic is the most splendid
and useful branch of philosophy.® For Pliny, magic is
always something reprehensible.

The magi are either fools or imposters. They are a

1 Nat. Hist.y bk. xxx, ch. i. "Auctoritatem ei maxumam fuisse nemo
miretur, quandoquidem sola artium tris alias imperiosissimas humanae
mentis conplexa in unam se redigit."

2 Ihid. He uses the words " mathematicas artes " ins-tead of '* as-
trologiam " but the words following make his meaning evident : " nuUo
non avido f utura de sese sciendi atque ea e caelo verissime pati credente."

8 Ihid. " Natam primum e medicina nemo dubitat ac specie salutari
inrepisse velut altiorem sanctioremque medicinam."

* Bk. xxx, ch. 2. ^ Bk. xxvi, ch. 9.

8 Bk. xxx, ch. 2. " Eudoxus qui inter sapientiae sectas clarissimam
utilissimamque eam intellegi voluit."

43] FLINT S NATURAL HISTORY 43

genus vanissimum,^ They believe such absurdities as that
herbs can dry up swamps and rivers, open all barriers,
turn hostile battle-lines in flight, and insure their possessor,
wherever he may be, abundant provision for every need.^
They make statements which Pliny thinks must have been
dictated by a feeling of contempt and derision for the
human race. They affirm that gems carved with the names
of sun and moon and attached to the neck by hairs of the
cynocephalus and feathers of the swallow will neutralize the
effect of potions, win audience with kings, and, with the
aid of some additional ceremony, ward off hail and locusts.*
They have the impudence to assert that the stone " helio-
tropium," combined with the plant of the same name and
with due incantations, renders its bearer invisible.* " Van-
itas " is Pliny's stock-word for their statements. Nero
proved how hollow are their pretenses by the fact that, al-
though he was most eagerly devoted to the pursuit of magic
arts and had every opportunity to acquire skill in them, he
was unable to effect any marvels through their agency and
abandoned the study of them.*'

1 Bk. xxviii, ch. 23. 2 gk. xxvi, ch. 9.

8 Bk. xxxvii, ch. 40. The word in this passage which I render as
"potion" is in the Latin "veneficium" — a word difficult to translate
owing to its double meaning. "Venenum" signifies a drug or potion
of any sort, and then in a bad sense a drug used to poison or a potion
used (to bewitch. In a passage soon to be cited Pliny contrasts " vene-
fica artes '* to " magicae artes " but I doubt if he always preserved such
a distinction. A similar confusion exists in regard to the Greek word
0(ip/za/cov, as Plato sets forth clearly in his Laws, There are, he says,
two kinds of poisons employed by men which cannot be clearly dis-
tinguished. One variety injures bodies "accordmg to a natural law."
"There is also another kind which persuades the more daring class
that they can do injury by sorceries and incantations . . ." Laws,
bk. xi, p. 933 (Steph.). Jowett's translation.

* Bk. xxxvii, ch. 60. " Magorum inpudentise vel manifestissimum in
hac quoque exemplum est . . ."

^ Bk. XXX, ch. 5, 6.

44 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [44

Moreover, magi or magicians deal with the inhuman, the
obscene and the abominable. Osthanes, and even the phil-
osopher Democritus, are led by their devotion to magic into
propounding such remedies as drinking human blood or
utilizing in magic compounds or ceremonies portions of the
corpses of men violently slain. ^ Magic is a malicious and
criminal art. Its devotees attempt the transfer of disease
from one person to another or the exercise of baleful sor-
cery.^ " It cannot be sufficiently estimated how great a
debt is due the Romans who did away with those monstrous
rites in which to slay a man was most pious ; nay more, to
eat men most wholesome." ' In fine, we may rest per-
suaded that magic is " execrable, ineffectual and inane."
Yet it possesses some shadow of truth, but is of avail
through " veneficas artes . . . non magicas/' * whatever
that distinction may be.

III. Illustrations of Pliny's fundamental belief in magic.
— Pliny, we have seen, made a bold pretense of utter disbelief
in magic, and also censured the art on grounds of decency,
morality and humanity. Yet despite this wholesale con-
demnation, in some places in his work it is difficult to tell
where his quotations from magicians cease and where state-
ments which he accepts recommence. Sometimes he ex-
plicitly quoted theories or facts from the writings of the
" magi " without censure and without any expression of
disbelief. If it is contended that he none the less regarded

1 Bk. xxviii, ch. 2. Pliny's own medicine is not prudish, and else-
where he gives instances of devotees of magic guarding against defile-
ment. (Bk. XXX, ch. 6 and xxviii, ch. 19).

2 Bk. xxviii, ch. 23. " Quanta vanitate," adds Pliny, " si falsum est,
quanta vero noxia, si transferunt morbos !"

8 Bk. xxx, ch. 4.

* Bk. xxx, ch. 6. " Proinde ita persuasum sit, intestabilem, inritam,
inanem esse, habentem tamen quasdam veritatis umbras, sed in his
veneficas artis pollere non magicas."

45] FLINTS NATURAL HISTORY 45

them as false and worthless, we may fairly ask, why then
did he give them such a prominent place in his encyclo-
pedia? Surely we must conclude either that he really had
a liking for them himself and more than half believed them,
or that previous works on nature were so full of such mate-
rial and his own age so interested in such data that he could
not but include much of this lore. Probably both alterna-
tives are true. Finally, many things which Pliny states
without any reference to the magi seem as false and absurd
as the far-fetched assertions which he attributes to them
and for which he shows so much scorn. Indeed, it hardly
seems paradoxical to say that he hated the magi but liked
their doctrines.

What clearer example of magic could one ask than the
conclusion that the odor of the burning horn of a stag has
the power of dispelling serpents, because enmity exists be-
tween stags and snakes, and the former track the latter to
their holes and extract the snakes thence, despite all resist-
ance, by the power of their breath ? Or that on this same
account the sovereign remedy for snake-bite comes " ex
coagulo hinnulei matris in utero occisi?" Or that, since
the stag is not subject to fever, the eating of its flesh will
prevent that disease, especially if the animal has died of a
single wound ? What more magical than to fancy that the
longest tooth of a fish could have any eflicacy in the cure
of fever? Or that excluding the person who had tied it on
from the sight of the patient for five days would complete
a perfect charm ? Or that wearing as an amulet the carcass
of a frog, minus the claws and wrapped in a piece of russet-
colored cloth, would be of any aid against disease? ^ Yet
the Natural History is full of such things.

To plants, for example, Pliny assigns powers no less

1 Concerning the stag, see bk. viii, ch. 50. On the use of frogs and
fishes to cure fevers, bk. xxxii, ch. 38.

46 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [46

marvelous than those which he has attributed to atiinmls.
There is one plant which, held in the hand, has a beneficial
effect upon the groin; ^ another overcomes the asp with tor-
por, and hence, beaten up with oil, is a remedy for the sting
of that snake. ^ Fern, he says, if mowed down with the edge
of a reed or uprooted by a ploughshare on which a reed has
been placed, will not spring up again.' Moreover, in his
twenty-fourth book, immediately after having announced
that he has sufficiently discussed for the present the marvd-
our properties attributed to herbs by the magi,* he proceeds
to mention the following remedies. One is a quick cure
for headache, and consists in gathering a plant growing on
the head of a statue and attaching it to your neck with a
red string. Another is a cure for tertian fever, and con-
sists in plucking a certain herb before sunrise on the banks
of a stream and in fastening it to the patient's left arm
without his knowledge. A third recipe instructs us that
plants which have taken root in a sieve that has been thrown
into a hedge-row "decerptae adalligataeque gravidis partus
adcelerant." A fourth would have herbs growing on dung-
hills a cure for quinzy, and a fifth assures us that sprains
may be speedily cured by the application of a plant " iuxta
quam canes urinam fundunt," torn up by the roots and not
allowed to touch iron.*^

Coming to minerals we find Pliny rather more reticent
in regard to strange qualities. His account of gems is writ-
ten mainly from the jeweler's point of view. When mar-
velous powers are mentioned, the magi are usually made re-

1 Bk. xxvi, ch. 59. 2 Bk. xxi, ch. 105.

* Bk. xviii, ch. 8. * Bk. xxiv, ch. 102.

^ Bk. xxiv, chs. 106, 107, 109, no, in. Evidently these last remedies
derive their force not merely from magic powers inherent in vege)tatioa.
The effect of ceremony and of circumstance becomes a factor.

47] PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 47

Sponsible, and such powers are frequently rejected as ab-
surd. Pliny, however, grants some magic properties in
certain stones. Molochitis, by some medicinal power which
it possesses, guards infants against dangers ; ^ and eumecas,
placed beneath the head at night, causes oracular visions.^
To water Pliny allows powers which we must regard as
magical, for according to him certain rivers pass under the
sea because of their hatred of it.*

In man, moreover, as well as in other creatures upon
earth, there is magic power. Pliny mentions men whose
eyes are able to exert strong fascination,* others who fill
serpents with terror and can cure snake-bite by merely
touching the wound, and others who by their presence addle
eggs in the vicinity.*^ Pliny takes up the power of words
and incantations in connection with man. Whether they
have potency beyond what we expect ordinary speech to
possess is a great and unanswered question. Our ancestors,
Pliny says, always believed so, and in every-<iay life we
often unconsciously accept such a view ourselves. If, for
instance, we believe that the Vestal virgins can, by an im-
precation, stop runaway slaves who are still within the city
limits, we must accept the whole theory of the power of
words. But, taken as individuals, the wisest men lack faith
in the doctrine.®

1 Bk. xxxvii, ch. 36. 2 gk. xxxvii, ch. 58.

» Bk. ii, ch. 106.

* Bk. vii, ch. 2. ". . . Qui visu quoque effascinent interimantque quos
diutius intueantur, iratis praecipue oculis, quod eorum malum facilius
sentire puberes. Notabilius esse quod pupillas binas in singulis habeant
oculis."

^ Bk. xxviii, ch. 6. The eggs, however, it should be said, are rep-
resented as being beneath a setting hen.

® Bk. xxviii, ch. 3. "Ex homine remediorum primum maxumae quaest-
ionis et semper incertae est, polleatne aliquid verba et incantamenta

A

i» - ■ - - ^

■ ■J ■■ *•

srmT :c r=r

C ^ -111 mr

s T

•ic

« < ..

*5t'^tt4 -srv* rr.ds:-:y-A f-i^r::Ti rtcntr* ci ii-r:- j-r»c*rj

w'^/T'l^ t// cii« <3:iesti6a vhethcr the go<li assvcr pizfcr or not, a
tv>f* -Mrhi^h u^«% ui </at of the field of magic tailess be rrgarded
M a rtt^AM of o>trcing the gods.

49] PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 49

patient be fasting. Touching the sufferer with the back of
her hand, she is to say, "Apollo forbids a disease to increase
which a naked virgin restrains." Then, withdrawing her
hand, she is to repeat the same words thrice and to join
with the patient in spitting on the ground each time.^

Pliny occasionally prefaces his marvelous remedies by
some such expression as " it is said." This circumstance
is scarcely to be taken as a sign of mental reservation, how-
ever, as the following absurd statement, which he makes
upon his own authority and declares is easily tested by ex-
periment, will indicate. " If a person repents of a blow
given to another, either by hand or with a missile, let him
spit at once into the palm of the hand which inflicted the
blow, and all resentment in the person struck will instantly
vanish." This is often proved, according to Pliny, in the
case of beasts of burden, which can be induced to increase
their speed by this method after the use of the whip has
failed.^

One can, perhaps, make some distinction between the
strange influences which Pliny credited and the statements
of the magi which he rejected. I believe that he did not
go to the length of affirming that plants or parts of animals
could cause panics, procure provisions, win you royal favor,
gain for you vengeance on your enemies, or make you in-
visible. But he was inconsistent enough. After asserting
that a single fish but a few inches long could immediately

1 Bk. xxvi, ch. 60. " Expert! adfiTmavere plurumum ref erre, si virgo
inx>onat nuda ieiuna ieiuno et manu supina tangens dioat; 'N^^at
Apollo pestem posse crescere cui nuda virgo restinguat/ atque ita
retrorsa inanu ter dicat totiensque despuant amibo."

2 Bk. xxviii, ch. 7. " Mirum dicimus, sed experimento facile : si quern
paeniteat ictus eminus comminusve inlati et statim exspuat in mediam
manum qua percussit, levatur ilico in percusso culpa. Hoc saepe delum-
bata quadripede adprobatur statim a tali remedio correcto animalis
ingressu."

50 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [50

arrest the progress of the largest vessel by attaching itself
to the keel of the ship/ was it for him to declare false the
notion that a stone can calm winds or ward off hail and
swarms of locusts ? He characterized as "idle talk" the as-
sertion of the magi that the stone "gorgonia" counteracted
fascination,* but he had already written : " Id quoque con-
venit, quo nihil equidem libentius crediderim, tactis omnino
menstruo postibus inritas fieri magorum artes, generis van-
issimi, ut aestimare licet." ^ Apparently, then, the only
charge which he could bring against magicians without re-
flecting upon himself was that of malicious and criminal
practices. His beliefs were much like theirs.

Indeed, the varieties of magic in the Natural History
have not yet been exhausted. For one thing, we must con-
sider Pliny's position in regard to magic properties of the
stars as well as of terrestrial matter. He believed in astrol-
ogy, at least to some extent, although one might not think
it if one read only the passage in which he speaks of the
debt of gratitude mankind owe to the great geniuses who
have freed them from superstitious fear of eclipses.* He
could, nevertheless, in naming some prominent personage
in each of the primary arts and sciences, mention Berosus,
to whom a public statue has been erected by the Athenians
in honor of his skill in prognostication, in connection with
astrology.*^

Pliny himself holds that the universe is a divinity, " holy
eternal, vast, all in all — nay, in truth is itself all," a propo-

1 Bk. xxxii, di. i. * Bk. xxxvii, ch. 59.

* Bk. xxviii, ch. 23.

* Bk. ii, ch. 9. Indeed, in bk. ii, ch. 30, he gives examples of omin-
ous elipses of the sun, although it is true that they were also of un-
usual length.

^ Bk. vii, ch. 37. " Astrologia Berosus cui ob divinas praedictiones
Athenienses publice in gymnasio statuam inaurata lingua statuere."

5 1 ] PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 5 1

sition rather favorable to astrological theory/ The sun is
the mind and soul of the whole world and the chief gov-
ernor of nature.^ The planets affect each other. A cold
star renders another approaching it pale; a hot star causes
its neighbor to redden; a windy planet gives those near it
a lowering aspect.* Saturn is cold and rigid; Mars a flam--
ing fire; Jupiter, located between them, is temperate and
salubrious.* When the planets reach a certain point in their
orbits, they are deflected from their regular course by the
rays of the sun.^

Besides effects upon each other the planets exert especial
influence upon the earth. " Potentia autem ad terram mag-
nopere eorum pertinens." ® They govern, each according
to its nature, the weather on our globe."' The planets also
have great influence upon diseases and on animal and plant
life in general, although Pliny does not dwell upon this
point at any length.^ The moon, a feminine and nocturnal
star, stirs up humors on earth and is powerful in producing

1 Bk. ii, ch. I. " Mundum . . . numen esse credi par est. Sacer est,
aetemus, inmensus, totus in toto, immo vero ipse totum."

2 Bk. ii, ch. 4. " Htmc esse mundi tatius animum ac planius mentem,
hunc principale naturae regimen ac numen credere decet opera eius aes-
timantes."

* Bk. ii, ch. 16. * Bk. ii, ch. 6. ^ g^ ii, ch. 13.

® Bk ii, ch. 6. See also bk. ii, ch. 39. " Ut solis ergo natura tem-
perando intellegitur anno sic reliquorum quoque siderum propria est
quibusque vis et a4 suam cuique naturam fertilis."

"^ Bk. ii, ch. 39. For the general physical interaction of earth and
stars as conceived by Pliny see bk. ii, ch. 38. " Terrena in caelum ten-
dentia deprimit siderum vis, eademque quae sponte non subeant ad se
trahit Decidunt imbres, nebulae subeunt, siccantur anmes, ruunt gran-
dines, torrent radii et terram in medio mundi undique inpellunt, iidem
infracti resiliunt et quae potuere auferunt secum. Vapor ex alto cadit
rursumque in altum redit Venti ingruunt inanes iidemque cum rapina
remeant Tot animalium hausitus spiritum e suiblimi trahit, at ille contra
nititur, tellusquc ut inani caelo spiritum fundit."

8 Bk. ii, ch. 41.

52 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [52

putrefaction and corruption in matter.* By the nature of
Venus every thing on earth is generated.*

To what extent the planets rule man's life Pliny does not
specify — ^an instance of prudent reticence on his part, if he
really consciously avoided the question. He disclaims any
belief in the vulgar notion that a star, varying in brightness
according to our wealth, is assigned to each of us, and that
the eternal stars rise and fade at the birth or death of in-
significant mortals. "Non tanta caelo societas nobiscum est
ut nostro fato mortalis sit ibi quoque siderum fulgor." *
But thus to deny that the stars are ruled by man's destiny
or doings is far from refusing to believe that men's lives
are ordered by the stars. Pliny, as we have seen, holds that
Venus has a considerable influence over the process of birth
in all animals. Also he certainly accepts the portentous
character of various particular celestial phenomena. " From
the stars celestial fire is vomited forth bearing omens of
the futiu-e." * He gives instances from Roman history of
comets which signalled disaster, expounds the theory that
their significance is to be determined from the direction in
which they move and the heavenly body whose powers they
receive, and states that the particular phase of life to which
they apply may be deduced from the shape which they
assume or from their position in relation to the sig^ of the
zodiac.**

^ Bk. ii, ch. 104.

2 Bk. ii, ch. 6. " Huius natura cimcta generantur in terris, namque
in alterutro exortu genitali rore conspergens non terrae modo concep-
tuus inplet verum animantium quoque omnium stimulat."

* Bk. ii, ch. 6.

* Bk. ii, ch. 18. " A sidere caelestis ignis exspuitur praescita secum
adferens."

^ Bk. ii, ch. 23. The part dealing with the shape and position of the
comet reads : " Tibiarum specie musicae arti portendere, obscenis autem
moribus in verendis partibus signorum, ingeniis et eruditioni, si tri-

53] PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 53

Pliny's belief in portents seems to have been general and
not limited to celestial phenomena. In a passage on earth-
quakes he declares, " Never has the city of Rome shaken
but that this was a forewarning of some future event." ^

Pliny is less certain in regard to the superstitious ob-
servances so common then, to secure good luck or ward off
evil fortune. In chapter five cJf his twenty-eighth book he
gives quite a list of practices, such as selecting persons with
lucky names to lead the victims at public lustrations, salut-
ing those who sneeze, placing saliva behind the ear to escape
mental anxiety, removing rings while eating, averting the
ill-omen of mentioning fire at meal-time by pouring water
beneath the table, and other superstitious table etiquette. He
cites beliefs of the same nature, as that odd numbers are for
every purpose the more efficacious, that medicines do no
good if placed on a table before being administered, that
baldness and headaches may be prevented by cutting the
hair on the seventeenth and twenty-ninth days of the moon,
and that women who walk along country roads twirling
distaffs, or even having these uncovered, bring very bad
luck, especially to the crops. He seems to have inclined to
the belief that there was a modicum of truth, at any rate,
in these notions and customs — ^and certainly we have already
seen him affirming the validity of analogous practices — ^but
he finally decides that amid the great variety of opinion ex-
isting in the matter he will not be dogmatic and that each
person may think as he deems best. His attitude is much
the same in regard to divination from thunder and light-
ning.^

quetram figuram quadratamve paribus angulis ad aliquos perennium
stellarum situus edant, venena fundere in capita septentrionalis aus-
trinaeve serpentis."

1 Bk. ii, ch. 86. " Numquam urbs Roma tremuit, ut non futuri eventus
alicuius id praenuntium esset/' See also bk. ii, ch. 85.

2 Bk. ii, ch. 54.

54 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [54

With all the foolish notions which he imbibed from an-
tiquity or into which his mind, over-hospitable to the fan-
tastic and marvelous, led him, Pliny had one good scientific
trait. He might believe in magic but he had no liking for
the esoteric. His mind might be confused but it was not
mystical. He had no desire to hide the " secrets " of
science and philosophy from the public gaze, to wrap them
up in obscure and allegorical verbiage lest the imworthy
comprehend them. On the contrary, he sharply remarked
apropos the lack of information about the medicinal prop-
erties of plants, that there was a most shameful reason for
this scarcity, namely, that even those who knew were un-
willing to give forth their knowledge, " as if that would
be lost to themselves which they passed on to others." ^

Such, then, is the Natural History. Pliny gives evidence
that many of the most intelligent men were coming to
doubt a large part of the superstitious beliefs and obser-
vances once universally prevalent, and he himself makes a
brave effort to assume a critical and judicious attitude.
Yet his work contains a great deal of magic and reveals,
what this essay in its entirety will make further evident, the
error of such a statement as the following from Eh*. White's
Warfare of Science and Theology:

Under the old Empire a real science was coming in and
thought progressing. Both the theory and practice of magic
were more and more held up to ridicule. Even as early a
writer as Ennius ridiculed the idea that magicians, who were
generally poor and hungry themselves, could bestow wealth on
others ; Pliny, in his Natural Philosophy, showed at great length
their absurdities and cheatery ; others followed in the same line

^ Bk. XXV, ch. 6. " Turpissima causa raritaitis quod etiam qui sciunt
demon strare nolunt, tamquam ipsis periturum sit quod tradiderint aliis."

..^.•aLii.M.Mt^^ ...I I. .

55] PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 55

of thought, and the whole theory, except among the very low-
est classes, seemed dying out.^

1 Vol. i, p. 382. Dr. White's book, whidi imputes well-nigh every
fantastic feature of mediaeval science to Christian institutions and theo-
logy, is written with too little use of primary sources, and considerable
ignorance of the character of ancient science.

Aside from unfairness in the general tone and mode of presentation,
— Cosmas Indicopleustes, for instance, is set forth as a typical representa-
tive of mediaeval science of the clerical type, while Albertus Magnus
is not permitted to stand as a representative of "theological" science
at all but is pictured as one inclined to true science w'ho was frightened
into the paths of theology by an ecclesiastical tyranny bitterly hostile
to scientific endeavor — the author makes some inexcusable mistakes
in details. For insitance, after speaking of "theological" methods, he
proceeds (vol. i, p. 33) : "Hence such contributions as that the basilisk
kills serpents by his breath and men by his glance," apparently in serene
ignorance of the fact that this statement about the basilisk was a com-
monplace of ancient science. Again (vol. i, p. 386) he tells us that in
1 163 the Council of Tours and Alexander III "forbade the study of
physics to ecclesiastics, which of course in that age meant the pro-
hibition of all such scientific studies to the only persons likely to make
them." On turning to the passage cited we find the prohibition to be
that persons who have vowed to lead a monastic life shall not absent
themselves from their monasteries for the purpose of studying "physica"
(which the context indicates means medicine, not physics), or reading
law. The canon does not apply to all ecclesiastics, and it is as absurd
to infer from it that "all such scientific studies were prohibited to
the only persons likely to make them" as to conclude that henceforth
no one could study civil law. To argue from a single piece of legisla-
tion is hazardous in any case. (For the canon, see Harduin, vol. vi, pt.
ii, p. 1598. Canon viii.)

On the whole the book strikes one as an unscientific eulogy of science
and a bigoted attack on bigotry. The inconsistency of the author's
professions and practice, to say nothing of the somewhat perplexing
arrangement of his material, reminds one of Plinjr's Natural History,

CHAPTER IV

Some Antecedents of the Belief in Magic in the

Roman Empire

Writers who have discussed the intellectual life under
the Roman Empire generally agree that it was not marked
by originality and creative power, and owed a perhaps un-
usually large debt to the past. The cosmopolitan character
of the Empire, the mingling at that time of the science,
theology, philosophy and superstition of different nations,
religions and races, deserve equal emphasis. The lore of
the magi of Persia, the occult science of Egypt, perhaps
even the doctrines of the gymnosophists of India, may be
regarded, together with that belief in divination which
played such a role in classical religion and government and
with other superstitious notions of Gredcs and Italians, as
contributory to the prominence of mag^c in the Empire.

To discuss with any attempt at completeness the influ-
ence of the past upon the belief in magic in the Empire lies,
however, outside the province of this essay. Pliny has
shown us something of the union of magic with science in
the literature before his day. Philo of Alexandria, Apu-
leius and the fame of Hermes Trism^stus may give us
some notion of the influence of the East. In other writers
of the period of which we treat one may discern further
traces of the thought and learning of the past. In general
such evidence must suffice. We shall, however, presently
take occasion to support our contention that Pliny gives one
S6 [S6

57] MAGIC BEFORE THE ROMAN EMPIRE 57

a fairly good idea of science before his day, by a few cita-
tions from two writers of repute, one a Greek and one a
Roman, of the period before the Empire. Moreover, the
great historical importance of Greek philosophy and the fact
that, besides playing a prominent part in Roman culture, it
exercised a powerful direct influence on Christian Europe
long after the fall of Rome, seem to justify some treatment
of its doctrines. Especially may we mention Plato and Aris-
totle, who exerted great influence not only during classical
times, but also the one in the Middle Ages, the other in the
period following the decline of Scholasticism.

We naturally incline to regard this earlier period of
more or less distinctively Greek thought and learning as a
golden age, comparatively speaking, characterized by sane
thinking if not also by careful investigation of nature, and
free from superstition, credulity and mysticism. The gen-
eral opinion seems to be that magic entered science and
learning and was accepted by men of intellectual promi-
nence only when mental decay had set in and when Oriental
influence had become a powerful force.

Yet something might be said for the opposite view that
this earlier age combined magic with its science and phil-
osophy as much, if not more, than the later time. We know
that Greek philosophy had its beginnings in mythology ; and
if the representatives of its maturity accepted the Greek re-
ligion with its auspices drawn from' sacrifices, its oracles
and the like, we may with reason ask, is it probable that
they would hesitate to give similar doctrines a place in their
scientific and philosophical systems? Pliny, for his part,
evidently regarded himself as less credulous and as less in-
clined to magic than the ancient Greeks, although it is true
that he attributed their belief to Oriental influence. He de-
clared that Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Plato
had learned the magic art abroad and had taught it on their

58 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [58

return.^ Beside the name of Hippocrates in the field of
medicine he set that of Democritus in the domain of magic*
Elsewhere he said that Pythagoras and Democritus, having
embraced the doctrine of the magi, first expounded the
properties of magic plants in the Western world.' In
Cicero's De Divifiatione, Epicurus is alone of the Gredc
philosophers declared free from trust in divination, and
Panaetius is said to have been the only Stoic to reject
astrology.*

Fortunately we are not here concerned to measure either
relatively or absolutely with any attempt at exactness the
amount of magic in the learning of the closing centuries of
Greek national life, but only to investigate whether in the
philosophy of the Greeks there were not theories at least
liable to encourage a later age to belief in magic. There

^ Nat, Hist., bk. xxx, ch. 2. "Certe Pythagoras, Empedocles, De-
mocritus, Plato ad banc discendam navigavere exsiliis verius quam pere-
grinationibus susceptis. Hanc reversi praedicavere, banc in arcanis hab-
uere." Philostratus, as we sball see, mentioned tbe same men as as-
sociating witb the magi, although he denied that they embraced the
magic art. (See infra, p. 66.)

2 Bk. xxx, ch. 2. " Plenumque miraculi et hoc, pariter utrasque artis
effloruisse, medicinam dico et magicenque, eadem aetate illam Hippocrate,
hanc Democrito inlu&trantibus." Pliny may have got a false idea of the
teachings of Democritus by accepting as genuine works which were
not. He tells us (bk. xxx, ch. 2) that some persons have vainly tried
to save Democritus' reputation by denying that certain works are ihis.
" Democritus Apellobechen Coptiten et Dardanum et Phoenicem inlust-
ravit voluminibus Dardani in sepulchrum eius petitis, suis vero ex dis-
ciplina eorum editis, quae recepta ab ullis hominum atque transisse per
memoriam aeque ac nihil in vita mirandum est In tantum fides istis
fasque omne deest, adeo ut qui cetera in viro probant, haec opera eius
esse inficientur. Sed frustra. Hunc enim maxume adfixisse animis earn
dulcedinem constat."

8 Bk. xxiv, ch. 9. " In promisso herbarum mirabilium occurrit aliqua
dicere et de Magicis. Quae enim mirabiliores ? Primi eas in nostro
orbe celebravere Pythagoras atque Democritus, consectati Magos."

* De Divinatione, bk. i, ch. 39, and bk. ii, ch. 42.

59] MAGIC BEFORE THE ROMAN EMPIRE 59

was, for instance, the view of the Stoics that the universe
is a single living whole — a theory well fitted to form the
starting-point for a belief in sympathetic magic. Also their
doctrine that events are all arranged in a fatal causal series
was favorable to divination. Quintus Cicero, represented
as upholding the truth of that art, cites the Stoics as author-
ity, and we may safely assume that Seneca drew his view
of divination largely from the same source.

The doctrine of Pythagoras also deserves mention, for it
has played a great role in history. He is said to have held
that the whole world is, and that the life of man ought to
be, harmoniously ordered in accordance with mathematical
principles; nay more, that such principles are living things
and that ntmibers are the essence of the universe. The log-
ical conclusion is that by skilful use of mere numbers
man can move heaven and earth. As the poet, eulogizing
Michael Scot, put it ; the " mathematici " by their art affect
numbers, by numbers affect the procession of the stars, and
by the stars move the universe. The emplo)mient of char-
acters constructed of numbers or of geometrical figures, the
use of numerical formulae as remedies or of compounds of
three portions of three kinds of drugs applied during three
successive days, is raised from the plane of superstition to
the level of science. It is not unreasonable to suppose that
the heavenly bodies with their apparently unchanging regu-
larity of movement are the governors of our existence.
Plato, who adopted the Pythagorean doctrines at least to a
considerable extent, declared that the loftiest function of the
sense of sight was to survey the heavens, an occupation by
which we gain philosophy.^ Like the Pythagoreans also,

he associated the four elements with regular solids. The

»

1 Timaeus, p. 47 (St€ph.)- The passage may be found in English
translation in vol. iii, p. 466, of B. Jowett's Plato's Dialogues (3d edit),
London, 1892.

6o MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [60

cube represented earth; the cKtohedron was water; the tet-
rahedron, fire; and the icosahedron, air.^ The remaining
regular solid, the dodecahedron, was held to represent the
universe as a whole.

Towards magic, as he understood it, Plato's attitude
seems to have been sceptical, though perhaps not confidently
so. He maintained that persons acquainted with medicine
and prophets or diviners were the only ones who could
know the nature of poisons which worked naturally, and of
such things as incantations, magic knots and waxen images ;
and that since other men had no certain knowledge of such
things, they ought not to fear but to despise them. He ad-
mitted, however, that there was no use in trying to convince
most men of this and that legislation against sorcery was
necessary.^ He himself occasionally mentioned charms or
soothsaying in a matter-of-fact way.

Whatever Plato's opinion of vulgar magic, his view of
nature was much like that of primitive man. He human-
ized material objects and materialized spiritual character-
istics. For instance, he asserted that the gods placed the
lungs about the heart " as a soft spring that, when passion
was rife within, the heart, beating against a yielding body,
might be cooled and suffer less, and might thus become
more ready to join with passion in the service of reason.'' *
He affirmed that the liver was designed for divination, and
was a sort of mirror on which the thoughts of the intellect
fell and in which the images of the soul were reflected, but
that its predictions ceased to be clear after death.* Plato
spoke of the existence of harmonious love between the de-

1 Timaeus, pp. 53-56 (Steph.) ; Jowett, vol. iii, pp. 473-476.

^ Laws, bk. xi, p. 933 (Steph.).

^ Timaeus, p. 70 (Steph.). The translation is that of Jowett, vol. iii,
p. 492.
*Ibid., p. 71 (Steph.).

6i] MAGIC BEFORE THE ROMAN EMPIRE 6l

ments as the source of health and plenty for vegetation,
beasts and men. Their " wanton love " he made the cause
of pestilence and disease. To understand both varieties of
love " in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies
and the seasons of the year is," he tells us, " termed astron-
omy." ^ This suggests that he believed in astrology — in
the potent influence of the stars over all changes in earthly
matter. He called the stars " divine and eternal animals, \)
ever abiding." ^ The " lower gods," of whom many at
least are identical with the heavenly bodies, form men who,
if they live well, return after death each to a happy exist-
ence in his proper star.® The implication is, though Plato
does not say so distinctly, that the stars influence human life.
Aristotle's doctrine was similar. Windelband has well
expressed his view:

The stars themselves were . . . for Aristotle beings of super- v /
human intelligence, incorporate deities. They appeared to him /\
as the purer forms, those more like the deity, and from them a ^
purposive rational influence upon the lower life of the earth
seemed to proceed — a thought which became the root of medi-
aeval astrology.*

Moreover, " his theory of the subordinate gods of the
spheres of the planets . . . provided for a later demonol- .
ogy." ^ And a belief in demons fosters a belief in magic.
For such subordinate gods — on the one hand movers of
nature's forces, and on the other hand subject to passions
like man and open to influence through symbols and con-

^ Symposium f p. i88 (Steph.). Translated by Jowett, vol. i, p. 558.

2 TimaeuSy p. 40 (Steph.). Jowett, vol. iii, p. 459.

^ Ibid., p(p. 41, 42 (Steph.).

* W. Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 147. English transla-
tion by J. H. Tufts. Macmillans, 1898.

« Windelband, Hist of Ancient Philos,, p. 272. Eng. transl. by H. E.
Cushman. Scriibners, 1899.

62 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [62

jurations — are evidently most suitable agents for the worker
of magic to employ. We must also mention Aristotle's
attribution of " souls *' to plants and animals, a theory
which would readily lend itself to an assumption of magic
properties in herbs and beasts.

Aristotle himself in his works upon natural science ac-
cepts such properties to a considerable extent. A few cita-
tions from his History of Animals ^ will show that we have
not been misled in inferring from Pliny that Greek science
at its best was not untainted by magic. The History of
Animals seems to attribute undue influence to the full moon
and the dog-star,^ and to hold that honey is distilled from
the air by the stars and that the wax alone is made by the
bees.^ Aristotle repeats the story that the salamander is a
fire-extinguisher.* He mentions as a cure for the sting of
a certain snake the drinking of a small stone " taken from
the tomb of one of the ancient kings." Like Pliny, he
makes human saliva a defense against serpents.*^ He sa)rs
of certain things that they are ominous of certain events.*

^ Aristotelis De Animalihus Historiae Libri X (Graece et Latine.
lo. Gottlob Schneider. Lipsiae, 1811). Vol. i contains the Greek
text In the following foot-notes I shall refer to the book, chapiter
and section by Roman and arabic numerals, but in the text the book
and chapters are denoted by letters of the Greek alphabet There is an
English translation of the work by Richard Creswell, London, 1862.
(Bohn Library.)

2 Bk. V, ch. XX, sec. 2 ; bk. vi, ch. xi, sec. 2 ; bk. vi, ch. xiv, sec. i ;
bk. vii, ch. xi; bk. viii, ch. xvii, sec. 4; bk. viii, ch. xx, sec 12.

'Bk. V, ch. xix, sec. 4. ViyveTai 6k Kjjpiov fikv ef avOow. K^pcjaiv 6i
(jfipaooLv airb tw duKpiov tqv SMpcjVj fikTu de to niKTOif e« tov dipog Koi jidTuara
kv raZf rCnf aarpav kniToTialg, koi brav KardOK^ipy ij Ipig. 'OAwf 6' ov yiyverai fdJu
irpib Tz'^iddog eTfiroTi^i. tov fiku ovv Krjpbv Trowel, oairep elprjTai, bk tCjv dvOicjVj rd 6i
fiiXi bri ov TTOiel, d^XXd (pipei rb tt/tttov, aijfielov. kv fiig, yap ij kv dvalv ^jLiipaic
irTJipTi evpioKovai rd a/i^ ol fie'XLTTOvpyol /liXiTog, 'En 6e tov /leroir^pov avOrj
yiyverai fikvy fikh. 6* oi), brau d<l>aipedy,

* Bk. V, ch. xvii, sec. 13. '^ Bk. viii, ch. xxviii, sec. 2.

« Bk. iii, ch. ix, sec 7 and bk. vi, ch. ii, sec 4.

63] MAGIC BEFORE THE ROMAN EMPIRE 63

He affirms that the hen-partridge is affected by the mere
breath of the cock or by a breeze from his direction/ He
thinks that insects are spontaneously generated from mud,
dung, wood, or flesh. ^ He says it is plain that the Narce
causes stupefaction in both fish and men.® He has not only
an idea that those with lice in their hair are less subject to
headaches, but also a notion that those who have lice and
take baths become more liable to the pest when they change
the water in which they wash themselves.* Another amus-
ing illusion which he records is that calves will suffer less
in their feet if their horns are waxed.*^ Thus the pages of
Aristotle give ground for belief that the fantasticalness of
mediaeval science was due to " the clear light of Hellas "
as well as to the gloom of the " Dark Ages."

The book by a Roman which we are to consider as illus-
trative of the condition of science before the age of the
Empire is Cato's treatise on agriculture. Several passages
emphasize the importance of such conditions as that the
moon should be new or waning or not shining during the
performance of such acts as the transplanting of trees or
the manuring of meadows. • It is also directed that in ad-
ministering medicine to oxen the man giving the dose shall
have fasted previously and that both he and the ox stand
upright during the operation.^ One medicine prescribed

1 Bk. V, ch. iv, sec. 7 and bk. vi, ch. ii, sec. 9. See also bk. vi, ch.
xvii, sec. 4.

2 Bk. V, ch. xvii, sec. 2. » ^k, jx, ch. xxv, isec 2.

* Bk. V, ch. xxv, sec. 2. '^ Bk. viii, ch. ix, sec. I.

^ De Re Rustica, chs. 26, 31, 37, 40, 50. Scriptores Rei Rusticae
Veteres Latini. Tomus Primus. lo. Matthias Gesnerus, Lipsiae, 1773.
The speed wkh which I progn'essed through the De Re Rustica was
accelerated by the fact that Mr. E. H. Oliver, Ph. D., then of the
School of Political Science, Columbia University, kindly lent me an
English translation which he had made of that work.

'' De Re Rustica, ch. 71. See also ibid., ch. 70.

64 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [64

for cattle is a mixture of 3 grains of salt, 3 leaves of laurel,
3 fibres of leek, 3 tufts of ulpicati ledc, 3 sprigs of the savin,
3 leaves of rue, 3 stalks of the white vine, 3 white beails,
3 live coals, 3 sextarii of wine. Each ox is to be given a
portion for three days and the whole is to be divided so
that it will suffice for exactly three doses. ^ To heal a sprain
or fracture the singing of the following nonsensical incan-
tation or formula is recommended : " In alios S. F. motas
vaeta daries dardaries astataries dissunapiter." ^ This was
written by a man generally supposed to have had much
common sense and who was enlightened enough to wander
how two augurs could let their eyes meet without laughing.

^ De Re Rustica, ch. 70.

2 De Re Rustica, ch. 160. " S. F." probably means " Sanitas Fraoto."
Two alternative charms are also suggested, namely, " Huat hanat huat
ista pista sista domiabo damnaustra " and " Huat huat huat ista sis tar
sis ardannabon dunnaustra."

CHAPTER V

Belief in Magic in the Empire

Having shown reason for believing that the Natural His-
tory is a fairly accurate mirror of the science of the past,
we come now to examine Pliny's own age and to observe
to what extent his attitude towards magic was characteristic
of it. " His own age," I say, but this is only roughly
speaking, for it is the general period of the Roman Empire
that we shall now consider, with the exception of the clos-
ing century which we reserve for later discussion. We
shall have now to speak first of the general attitude towards
magic in the Empire, and then in particular of two or three
men or works that corroborate the rich evidence which
Pliny, for the most part unconsciously, gave of the place
of magic in the intellectual life of the time.

I. General attitude. — At the start, just as in our discus-
sion of the Natural History, we find it necessary to distin-
guish the position of men towards what they called "magic."
Pliny's condemnation of the magi and of all their beliefs
as a matter of general principle was probably the regular
attitude. A stigma seems to have been attached to the word
"magic ;" and magi seem to have been regarded as dangerous
characters. In his history Dio Cassius represents Maecenas
as warning Octavius Caesar that while the practice of divi-
nation is necessary, and augury by sacrifices and flight of
birds an art to be encouraged, magicians ought to be en-
tirely done away with. For, telling the truth in some cases
65] 6s

66 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [66

but lying in more, they incite many persons to revolt/ The
prejudice in the Empire against magic is further illustrated
by the fact that pagan and Christian controversialists seldom
failed to impute to the opposing religion the practice of
this malign art.

Now and then some learned man like Eudoxus might
hold that the doctrines of the magi of Persia called for
eulogy rather than reproach. Thus Apuleius, in his Defense
against the accusation of magic brought against him, ex-
plained that magus in the Persian language was
equivalent to the Latin sacerdos or priest, and that,
among the four greatest men of the realm selected to edu-
cate the heir to the Persian throne, one had the task of in-
structing him in the magic of Zoroaster. This magic dealt
with " the rules of ceremonial, the due observance of things
sacred, the law of religious rites." ^ It was the cult of
the gods.

Do you hear, you who rashly charge me with magic, that this art
is acceptable to the immortal gods, consists of celebrating and
reverencing them, is pious and prophetic, and long since was
held by Zoroaster and Oromagus, its authors, to be noble and
divine ? Nay, it is included among the chief studies of royalty,
and the Persians no more think of rashly allowing any one to
become a magician than to become a king.*

^Dio Cassius, ch. Hi, sec. 36. fiavriK^ fih yap avayKaia earl, ml ndvrt^
TLvag Kol kpdTTTag naX oluvLarag anddet^oVf dig oi Pov?i6/ievoi ri Koiv6aaa6ai aoviaovrai.
Tovg 6e dr^ fiayevrdg Trdw ovk elvai irpoa^Kei. ttoXAovc yap 7ro22diuc ol roiovroi, rd
fih TLva aTafi^, to. 6h 6^ TrAe/w ipevdy Xiyovreg, vevxf^ovv eiralpovai.

Lecky translates the passage in his History of European Morals (1889),
vol. i, p. 399. The next sentence of the passage is also worth qij
rd d* avrb tovto koI t(jv ^i}\.oao<^Eiv TrpoaKoiovfiivoiv ovk bXiyoi noiovai,

^Apologia, ch. xxv (Van der Vleet, Apologia et Floridi
1900). "Leges cerimoniarum, fas sacrorum, ius religionum*'

8 Ibid., ch. xxvi. "Auditisne, magiam, qui earn temere acci*
esse diis immortalibus acceptam, colendi eos ac venerandi ;

r

67] BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE 67

But if his accusers mean magic in the popular sense, that is,
Apuleius grants, a different matter.

Even educated men, however, probably more often, like
Pliny, regarded the magi as all one with other magicians.
Philostratus, in his life of ApoUonius of Tyana, seems to
approximate much closer to this position than to that taken
by Apuleius, although one would expect a biographer of
that mystic personage to view the magi with favor. Philo-
stratus declares that ApoUonius was no magician, although
he did associate with the magi of Babylonia, the Brahmins
of India, and the g3niinosophists of Egypt. For he was
like Empedocles, Pythagoras, Democritus and Plato who fre-
quented those sects and yet did not embrace the (magic) art.^

Of what we should call magic, however, there was a
plenty in the Roman Empire, as in fact the words of Dio
Cassius have indicated.^ Besides the general acceptance of
divination there was a great deal of superstitious medicine.
There seems to be little room for doubt that Pliny's dia-
tribes against the medical art were justifiable, and that his
own trust in marvelous medicinal properties of animals and
plants was often equalled. Men of the highest eminence in
public life, whom one would expect to have had at their
disposal the best medical talent of the time, are reported to

piam scilicet et divini scientem, aam inde a Zoroastro et Oromazo, auc-
toribus suis nobilem, caelitum antistitam? Quippe qui inter prima re-
galia docetur, nee ulli temere inter Persas concessum est magum esse,
hand magis quam regnare/* This definition reminds one of Agrippa
von Nettesheim's praise of "that science divine beyond all human trac-
ing." In a less degree — for with Apuleius magic is the cult of the
gods and not much concerned with material things — dt recalls the high
place assigned to magic by Porta and Francis Bacon.

1 Bk. i, di. 2 of the life of ApoUonius in the works of Philostratus
as edited by Gottfridus Olearius. Lipsiae, 1709. dfiiX^aavreg fidyotg koI
rro?^ daifiSvia elnovreg oiircj iizTjxGrjaav ry T^xyi)*

2 Indeed " magic," though condemned, was popular, and charlatans
calling themselves " magi " did a thriving business.

68 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [68

have employed the most absurd remedies. Suetonius tdls
us that the Emperor Augustus wore seal's skin, his suc-
cessor Tiberius laurel leaves, as a protection against light-
ning.^ Riny recounts how M. Servilius Nonianus, prittr-
ceps civitatis, fearing opthalmia, had fastened to his neck
a piece of linen containing some paper on which were
written the Greek letters p and a. This was done before
any mention of the disease was allowed to be made to him
or by him. Mucianus, thrice consul, carried a live fly
around in a bit of white linen for a similar purpose, and of
course both men attributed their escape from disease to
these bizarre methods.^ Moreover, much magic has been
supposed to have been involved in the numerous Mysteries
to which men sought initiation and in the Oriental cults
which became so popular. Astrology was seemingly as uni-
versally cultivated as in the Middle Ages, and that, too,
though perhaps in Roman times it was in appearance less
of a science and more of a superstition.

There were occasional imperial edicts against astrologers,
it is true, and even sporadic persecution of them. But the
explanation of such measures is belief, not scepticism, and
they denote not disbelief in the art itself but disapproval of
the use to which it was put-r-such as revealing the fate of
the present and the name of the coming ruler. Almost every
emperor had an astrologer at his court, and the historians
of the period delighted in telling stories of astrologers who
foretold their own deaths, or of monarchs who in vain
attempted to thwart the decrees of fate.^ Alexander Seve-

1 Suetonius, Aug., ch. xc ; Tiber., ch. Ixix. Cited .by W. E. H. Lecky.
Hist, of European Morals (London, 1899), vol. i, p. 367. Lecky gives
a large amount of material on superstition in the Roman Empire.

^ Nat. Hist., bk. xxviii, ch. 5.

• A. Bouche Leclercq. " UAstrologie dans le monde romain." Revue
Histn vol. Ixv, pp. 249 et seq. If ,we may believe the Roman historians.

69] BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE 69

rus IS said to have founded chairs of astrology salaried
By the state and with provision for scholarships for students.^
Occasional persecution perhaps made the mathematici more
highly valued, and the jibes of the satirists against astrolo-
gers and their followers attest rather than disprove the
popularity of the art. Pliny the Elder and Tacitus asserted
its great currency.^

The best science of the Empire reflected to a considerable
extent these superstitions sanctioned by public opinion, as
our discussion of Seneca and Ptolemy will indicate in some
detail. For the present we may observe how the great
Galen — whose authority reduced to a single school the many
quarreling medical sects of his day, was later implicitly
accepted by the Arabs, and then dominated European medi-
cine to the time of Paracelsus — was not above astrological
medicine or the use of fantastical remedies. He displayed
trust in amulets and believed that such things as the ashes
of frogs or " hippocampi '' have remedial power. ^ He held
that the critical days of disease are largely influenced by the
moon, and affirmed that we receive "the force of all the stars
above." * It should be noted moreover that in one passage,

Tiberius was a devotee of astrology ; Caligula was warned of his death
by the stars; Nero, among other acts dictated by his trust in the art,
ordered a number of executions in order to avoid -the evils threatened
by a comet; Galba, the three Flavians and Vespasian all had their as-
trologers; Titus was himself an adept in the art; Domitian, when dis-
posing of persons whom the sitars designated as dangerous, made the
fatal error of sparing Nerva because the constellations allowed him
but a brief additional term of life ; etc,

^ Revue Hist, vol. Ixv, p. 252.

2 Nat. Hist., bk. xxx, ch. i, and Tacitus, Annals, bk. vi, ch. 22 (28 in
some editions).

^Carolus Gottlob Kuhn. Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia. (Lipsiae,
1821, 19 vols.), vol. xii, p. 362. De simplicium medicamentorum tem-
peramentis ac facultatibus.

^De diebus decretoriis, ibtd,, vol. ix, pp. 901 et seq. irdvruv fih tow
&V(j6ev aarpuv hiroT^iofi^v rrjg dwdjLiecjg.

/

70 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [70

in giving expression to his zeal for astronomy as the hand-
maid of the healing art, Galen accused many physicians of
paying no attention to the stars. But he asserted that
in this neglect they were no true followers of the great
Hippocrates, whom they extolled but never imitated, for
Hippocrates had maintained that astronomy had no small
bearing on the art of the physician and that geometry was
its indispensable precursor.^

Philosophy as well as science was not unfavorable to some
varieties of magic. Neo-Platonism, the most prominent
school of philosophy in the Empire, probably led men on
to belief in magic more than any previous classical system.
Nature was looked upon as real only in so far as it was
soul, and its process were regarded as the expression of
the world-soul's mysterious working. The investigation of
nature thus tended to become an inquiry concerning spirits
and demons, a study into the strange and subtle relations
existing between things united, as all things are, by bonds
of spiritual sympathy. True, the earlier Alexandrines are
said to have condemned magic arts,^ but we have seen that
such condemnation need not amount to much. Plotinus
attacked only the most extreme pretensions of astrology,
and was ready to grant that the stars were celestial charac-
ters and signs of the future. He even conceded that predic-
tion might be made from birds. But to him astrology and
augury seemed of comparatively small importance, for he
believed everything to be joined to and dependent upon
every other thing and that in any object the wise man might
see signs of everything else.^ Succeeding Neo-Platonists,

1 " Quod optimus medicus sit quoque philosophus." Ibid., vol. i, p. 53.

2 Vacherot, L'Ecole d' Alexandria, vol. ii, p. 115.

'Ricardus Volkmann, Plotini EnneadeSy Lipsiae (Teubner) 1883.
Ennead ii, ch. iii, sec. 7. oXV ei aij/jLaivovaiv ovtol to, kadfieva^ &aKep
(jMfjkv TTO/lAa Kal &?i.?ia aijfiavTiKa elvai rav kaofihcjv^ ri av to ttolovv eIij; koI jJ rd^i^

71 ] BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE yi

at any rate, were often devoted to magic. The name of
lamblichus, for instance, is one of the most prominent in
the field of the occult.

Moreover, in the time of the Empire a tendency was
noticeable to confuse philosophy with magic. If this ten-
dency was not justifiable, it is at least suggestive. Dio
Cassius, in the passage above quoted, represents Maecenas
as saying that not a few of those who pretend to be phil-
osophers practice magic. ^ Apuleius, accused of magic,
stated in his Apologia that he was undertaking not only his
own defense but that of philosophy.^ The accusation
against him also suggests similar charges brought against
mediaeval men of learning during their lives or reputations
which they won after death. Apuleius, having married a
rich widow older than himself, was charged by some syco-
phant, jealous rival or other personal enemy with having
obtained her affections by use of sorcery. Apuleius seems

TTWf ; oh yap av koTffiaivero Terayfiivug (i9} iKdarojv yiyvofiivuv. lara roivw S^airep
yp&fjLfiaTa kv ovpavc^ ypatpo/ieva ael ^ yeypafifiiva koI tavohfievaj noiovvra juivroi
ipyov Koi a^lo, eTranoXovdElTD de t^ 6e t) irap' avribv arifjuujia, 6q airh fiidg apx^C kv
hi ^^9 Trap' blT^v fiipovg &?i'Xo av rig fiddoi, Kal yap not rjdog &v rig yvoirj elg
IxpddkiwvQ Tivog i6g)v ^ ri dAAo fiipog rov adfiarog nal Kivdhvovg Kal aurijpiag, nal
ovu fitprj jiev EKelvOf /lipij Sk Kal ijfieig. aXka oiv &X2x)ig, fieard 6i iz&vra aijfieluv
Kal a(xj>6g rig 6 [laBliv k^ a?[Xov dXAo. izoX^a 6k ^Sjj awi^eig, yiyvdfieva yiv^oKerai
irdai. Tig ovv 7J ovvra^ig if fiia; ovtcj yap Kal rd Kara rovg 6pveig eiTioyov Kal rd
&X?ia ^^a, d0' (!)v aTifiaivofi^a EKaara, Gwi^pTfjadai 6^ Set aTXifkoLg to, Tz&vray Kal
liri fi6vov kv hi TOW Koff EKaara rov ev Eipofihov aifinvota fiiay dAAd nokv fidXXov Kal
TzpdTEpov kv Tif) navrL This entire third chapter of the Ennead deals with
the subject, ^rept rdv eI tzoleI to. aarpa.

See The Philosophy of Plotinus, Dunlap Printing Co., Phila., 1896,
page 40, for further references to passages in his works giving his
views anent astrology. He believed that the souls of the dead are
still able to benefit men and to inspire with powers of divination.
Ennead, iv, ch. vii, sec. 15.

^ Page 66, note i.

2 Apologia, ch. iii. Even if the oration was a satire and not a speech
actually delivered, the inferences to be drawn from it would be prac-
tically the same.

72 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [72

to have studied medicine, if no other branch of physical
science, for he asserts that certain verses laid to his charge
by the accuser deal with nothing more harmful than a recipe
for making tooth-powder, and that a woman whom he was
said to have bewitched had merely fallen into an epileptic
fit while consulting him concerning an ear-ache.^ This
might be taken to show that the pursuit of science was
already liable to give one a bad reputation as a wizard ; but
it should be said that the love-verses of Apuleius, as well as
his poetical prescriptions, were used to support the accusa-
tion, and that the purchase of fish was also brought forward
as a suspicious circumstance. Apuleius affirms in his 01^-
tion that "philosophers" have always been subjected to such
charges. He says, however, that the investigators of physical
causes like Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus and Epi-
curus generally have the epithet atheist cast in their teeth,
while it is the seekers into the mysteries of theology and
religion like Epimenides, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Ostanes
who are reputed to be magi.^

II. Philo of Alexandria and allegorical interpretation. —
Allegorical interpretation, unless of a very mild character,
is usually a fantastic and mystical method of deriving in-
formation or inspiration. Even if an author intended to
conceal secret mysteries beneath the letter of his text, there

^ Apuleius may have been guilty of attempting to practice magic. Cer-
tainly he 'believed in its possibility. He affirmed the existence of subor-
dinate gods, or demons, — ^interpreters and aittbassadors between mankind
and the superior gods, who live far away from us and have no direct
concern with our affairs. The demons, he believed, were susceptible
to human influence and capable of working marvels. He stated that
the art of divination was due to them. See his De Deo Socratis.

2 Apologia^ ch. xxvii. Evidently hostility to magic did not commence
with Christianity. Not even, as Roger Bacon thought, did the practice
of confusing philosophy with magic originate among Christian writers.
Bridges, Opus Mains, vol. i, p. 29.

73] BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE 73

IS very slight chance that the far-fetched and intricate mode
of solution employed by the interpreter will be the one
which the writer had in mind. In most cases, however,
after due allowance has been made for figures of speech
and play of poetical imagination, it is an erroneous and
absurd assumption to suppose that an author did not mean
what his language indicates and no more. Therefore the
believer in allegorical interpretation would seem to be ac-
cepting something quite like a magical doctrine. Indeed,
allegorical interpretation is liable to lead one into a belief
that words, besides possessing a mystical significance with
which the thought of their writer had endowed them, have
in and of themselves great power. It borders upon the
occult reveries of the Cabalists and upon that magic power
of words which we have seen upheld by Roger Bacon, John
Reuchlin and Henry Cornelius Agrippa.

This allegorical interpretation of literature has played a
great part in human history. It was rife in the age of the
Roman Empire, when Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (ap-
proximate date, 30 B. c. to 54 a. d.) was perhaps its great-
est exponent, as he was also the chief member of the Jewish-
Alexandrian school of philosophy.

Philo carried allegorical interpretation to an absurd ex-
treme even if he did not go quite so far as Reuchlin and
Agrippa. Not only did he make such assertions as that by
Hagar was typified " encyclical education," that Ishmael
was her " sophist son," and that Sarah stood for " the rul-
ing virtue," ^ but in general he tried to read into the Old

^ See Philo's treatise De Cherubim, cited in vol. ii, p. 243, of Rev.
James Drummond's Philo Judaeus; or The Jewish Alexandrian Philo-
sophy in its Development and Completion (2 vols., London, 1888).
Concerning Philo see also Edouard Harriot, Philon le Juif (Fslt'is, 1898),
where a full bioliography of Philonian and Jewish-Alexandrian litera-
ture may be found. A third important secondary book on Philo is by
Siegfried: Philo von Alexandria (Jena, 1875).

74 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [74

Testament all the doctrines of Greek philosophy and science.
He declared that all knowledge, whether in religfion, phil-
osophy or natural science, might be acquired by all^orical
interpretation of the Pentateuch. Now we can say without
manifesting any semblance of irreverence towards true re-
ligion, that to endeavor to gain from the books of the Old
Testament — especially by the methods which Philo employed
— either the key to all philosophy or adequate knowledge of
natural science and extensive control of the forces of nature,
would, if possible, be as marvelous a feat, and is as falla-
cious and fantastic a proceeding, as to try to coin gold from
copper, or to learn the future from the stars, or even to
obtain a solution of the problems of philosophy and a
knowledge and control of nature by invoking demons to in-
struct and to assist you. The very notion that some man
like Moses a thousand or more years ago had at his com-
mand all the knowledge that can ever be got is magical itself.
Moses must have been a magician to know so much. Philo,
moreover, if he did not believe in a magic power of words,
at least showed that they seemed to him to have a most
extraordinary significance. In his treatise, De Mutatione
Nominum, he relates with great unction the just punish-
ment of hanging which overtook an impious scoffer who
derided the notion that the change in the names of Abraham
and of Sarah had any profound meaning.^ As one would
naturally expect from what has been said about Philo thus
far, he regarded knowledge as something sacred and eso-
teric. In his writings he liked to talk of mysteries and to
request the uninitiated to withdraw. This attitude, while
in itself not exactly magic, is,^ as has been already suggested,
the product of a mind attuned to magic. Finally, Philo, fol-
lowing Pythagoras, attached great significance to numbers.

1 Drummond, vol. i, p. 13.

75] BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE 75

Philo not only represents a widespread tendency during
the Roman Empire, but probably well illustrates the influ-
ence of that tendency upon later times. His numerous
works were apparently much consulted by the church
fathers, and thereby exerted a strong influence upon the
Middle Ages. It is needless to enlarge upon the promi-
nence of allegorical interpretation in the works of mediaeval
ecclesiastical writers. The conception of knowledge as
esoteric was also prevalent then, though perhaps to a less
extent. To give an early instance from patristic literature,
Clement of Alexandria, in his Stromata, insists upon the
necessity of veiling divine truth in allegories, and has a
long discussion in favor of mysticism in learning, citing as
examples Greek philosophers as well as Hebrew writers.^
Moreover, to Philo as source we may trace back the dis-
quisitions upon the mystic, if not magic, properties of six and
other numbers which we find in Augustine ^ and apparently
in almost every mediaeval writer who had occasion to speak
of the six days of creation and of the seventh day of rest.

ni. Senecds Problems of Nature and divination, — We
shall next consider the Problems of Nature — or Natural
Questions, if one prefers merely to transcribe the Latin —
of Seneca, who was practically a contemporary of Pliny.
Seneca impresses one as a favorable representative of an-
cient science. He tells us that already in his youth he had
written a treatise on earthquakes and their causes.® His

^ Stromata, bk. v, ch. 9. Nor was such mysticism advocated by theo-
logical writers alone. Roger Bacon — but one instance from many —
declared that one lessened the majesty of knowledge who divulged its
mysteries, and even went to the length of enumerating seven methods
by which the arcana of philosophy and science might be concealed from
the crowd (a vulgo), De Secretis Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate
Magiae. Rolls Series, vol. xv, pp. 543-544.

2 De Civitate Dei, bk. xi, ch. 30.

8 " Aliquando De Motu Terrarum volumen iuvenis ediderim." L.

76 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [76

aim is to inquire into the natural causes of phenomena; he
wants to know why things are so. He is aware that his
own age has only entered the vestibule of the knowledge
of natural phenomena and forces, that it has but just begun
to know five of the many stars, that " there will come a
time when our descendants will wonder that we were ignor-
ant of matters so evident/' ^

One must admit, however, that along with Seneca's con-
sciousness of the very imperfect knowledge of his own age
there goes a tendency to esotericism. The following lan-
guage would come fittingly from the mouth of a magician :

There are sacred things which are not revealed all at once.
Eleusis reserves sights for those who revisit her. Nature does
not disclose her mysteries in a moment. We think ourselves
initiated ; we stand but at her portal. Those secrets open not
promiscuously nor to every comer. They are remote of access,
enshrined in the inner sanctuary.^

Seneca seems to regard scientific research as a sort of re-
ligious exercise. His enthusiasm in the study of natural
forces appears largely due to the fact that he believes them
to be of a sublime and divine character, and above the petty
affairs of men.

Aiinaei Seneoae Naturalium QuaesHonum Libri Septemj bk. vi, ch. 4.
The edition by G, D. Koeler, Gottitigen, 1819 has convenient summaries
indicating contents at the head of each 'book, and devotes several hun-
dred pages to a " Disquisitio " and " Animadversiones " upon Seneca's
work. In Pancoucke's Library, vol. cxxxxvii, a French translation ac-
companies the text.

1 " Veniet tempus, quo posteri nostri tarn aperta nos nescisse mirentur.
Harimi quinque stellarum . . . modo ooepimus scire." Bk. vii, ch. 25.

2 Bk. vii, ch. 31. " Non semel quaedam sacra traduntur. Eleusin
servat quod ostendit revisentibus. Rerum natura sacra sua non simul
tradit. Initiatos nos credimus ; in vestibule eius haeremus. Ilia arcana
non promiscue nee omnibus patent; reducta et in interiore sacrario
clausa sunt."

./^

yy^ BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE yy

Indeed, the phenomena which he discusses are mainly
meteorological manifestations, such as winds, rain, hail,
snow, comets, rainbows, and — what he regards as allied sub-
jects — earthquakes, springs and rivers. Probably he would
not have regarded the study of zoology or of physiology as
so sublime. At any rate he considers only a comparatively
few " natural questions," and hence the amount and variety
of belief in magic which he has occasion to display is cor-
respondingly limited.

It is evident enough, however, that Seneca by no means
accepted magic as a whole. He tells us that uncivilized
antiquity believed that rain could be brought on or driven
away by incantations, but that to-day no one needs a phil-
osopher to teach him that this is impossible.^ And, al-
though he affirms that living beings are generated in fire,
believes in some rather peculiar effects of lightning, such
as removing the venom from- snakes which it strikes, and
recounts the old stories of floating islands and of waters
with power to turn white sheep black, he is sceptical about
bathing in the waters of the Nile as a means of increasing
the female's capacity for child-bearing.^ He qualifies by
the phrases, " it is believed " and " they say,** the asser-
tions that certain waters produce foul skin-diseases and that
dew in particular, if collected in any quantity, has this evil
property.* I imagine he did not believe the story he re-
peats that the river Alphaeus of Greece reappears in Sicily

1 Bk. iv, ch. 7. " Et apud nos in duodecim tabulis cavetur ne quis
alienos fructus excantassit. Rudis adhuc antiquitas credebat et attrahi
imbres cantibus, et repelli; quorum nihil posse fieri, tam palam est, ut
huius rei causa nullius philosophi schola intranda sit."

2 Bk. V, ch. 6 for animals being generated in flames.
Bk. ii, ch. 31 for snakes struck by lightning.

Bk. iii, ch. 25 for the Nile. Bk. iii passim, for marvelous fountains, etc,

8 Bk. iii, ch. 25.

78 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [78

as the Arethusa, and there every four years, on the very-
days when the victims are slaughtered at the Olympian
games, casts up filth from its depths.^ The themes Seneca
discusses of course afford him less opportunity for the tak-
ing up of the magic properties of plants, animals and other
objects, but he was probably less credulous in this respect
than Pliny, unless his pretensions are even more deceptive.
Seneca did believe, however, that whatever is caused is
a sign of some future event.^ He accepts divination in all
its ramifications. Only he holds that each flight of a bird
is not caused by direct act of God nor the vitals of the
victim altered under the axe by divine interference, but
that all has been arranged beforehand in a fatal and causal
■ series.* He believes that all unusual celestial phenomena
are to be looked upon as prodigies and portents.* But no
\ less truly do the planets in their unvarying courses signify
the future. The stars are of divine nature and we ought
to approach the discussion of them with as reverent an air
as when with lowered countenance we enter the temples for
worship.*^ Not only do the stars influence our upper atmos-
phere as earth's exhalations affect the lower, but they an-
nounce what is to occur.® Seneca employs the statement of
Aristotle that comets signify the coming of storms and
winds and foul weather, to prove that comets are stars;

^ Bk. idi, ch. 26.

2 Bk. ii, ch. 32. " Quidquid fit, alicuius rei futurae signum est."

8 Bk. ii, ch. 46. * Bk. i, ch. i.

*^ Bk. vii, ch. 30. " Egregie Aristoteles ait, numquam nos verecun-
diorcs esse debere, quam quum de diis agitur. Si intramus templa com-
positi, si ad sacrificium accesuri vultum submittimus, togam adducimus,
si in omne argumentum modestiae fingimur ; quanto hoc magis f acere de-
bemus, quum de sideribus, de stellis, de deorum natura disputamus, ne
quid temere, ne quid impudenter, aut ignorantes affirmemus, aut
scientes mentiamur?"

« Bk. ii, ch. 10.

\

79] BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE 79

and declares that a comet is a portent of a storm in the
same way as the Chaldeans say that a star brings good or
ill fate to men at birth. ^ In fact, his chief, if not sole, ob-
jection to the Chaldeans would seem to be that in their pre-
dictions they take into account only five stars.

What? Think you so many thousand stars shine on in vain?
What else, indeed, is it which causes those skilled in nativities
to err than that they assign us to a few stars, although all those
that are above us have a share in the control of our fate?
Perhaps those nearer direct their influence upon us more \

closely; perhaps those of more rapid motion look down on us
and other animals from more varied aspects. But even those
stars that are motionless, or because of their speed keep equal
pace with the rest of the universe and seem not to move, are
not without rule and dominion over us.^

Seneca accepts a theory of Berosus, whose acquaintance we
have already made, that whenever all the stars are in con-
junction in the sign of Cancer there will be a universal
conflagration, and a second deluge when they all unite in
Capricorn.*

It is on thunderbolts as portents of the future that Seneca
dwells longest, however. " They give," he declares, " not

^ Bk. vii, 28. " Chaldean " was often used to denote an astrologer
without reference to the person's nationality.

2 Bk. ii, ch. 32. " Qtdnque stellarum potestatem Chaidaeorum obser-
vatio excepit. Quid tu? tot millia siderum judicas otiosa lucere? Quid
est porro aliud, quod errorem incutiat peritis natalium, quam quod paucis
nos sideribus assignant: quum omnia quae supra nos sunt, partem sibi
nostri vindicent? Submissiora forsitan in nos propius vim suam diri-
gunt; et ea quae frequentius mota aliter nos, aliter cetera animalia
prospiciunt. Ceterum et ilia quae auit immota sunt, aut propter velo-
citatem universo mundo parem immotis similia, non extra ius dominium-
que nostri sunt. Aliud aspice et distributis rem officiis tractas. Non
magis autem facile est scire quid possint, quam dubitari debet, an
possint."

8 Bk. iii, ch. 29.

/
f •■

8o MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [go

signs of this or that event merely, but often announce a
whole series of events destined to occur, and that by mani-
fest decrees and ones far clearer than if they were set down
in writing." ^ He will not, however, accept the theory that
lightning has such great power that its intervention nullifies
any previous and contradictory portents. He insists that
divination by other methods is of equal truth, though per-
haps of minor importance and significance. Next he at-
tempts to explain how dangers of which we are warned by
divination may be averted by prayer, expiation or sacrifice,
and yet the chain of events wrought by destiny not be
broken. He maintains that just as we employ the services
of doctors to preserve our health, despite any belief we may
have in fate, so it is useful to consult a haritspex. Then he
goes on to speak of various classifications of thunderbolts
according to the nature of the warnings or encouragements
which they bring.^

IV. Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and astrology. — ^Astrology was
more than a popular belief which extended to men high in
social rank and public life; it was held by scientists as well,
though naturally in a less naive and more scientific form.
Nevertheless, the astrology of the scientist might be of an
extreme enough type and of a more clearly magical variety
than we were able to gather from Pliny, who, moreover,
does not seem to have been acquainted with any systematic
doctrine of the influence of the stars.

Such a systematized treatment Claudius Ptolemaeus set

^ Bk. ii, ch. 32. Seneca has been describing other manifestations of
the "divina et subtilis potentia" of thunderbolts; he proceeds, "Quid,
quod futura portendunt: nee unius tantum aut alterius rei signa dant,
sed saepe totum fatorum sequentium ordinem nuntiant, et quidem de-
cretis evidentibus, longeque clarioribus, quam si scriberentur ?*'

2 His discussion of divination by thunderbolts is contained in
bk. ii, ch. 31-50.

8i] BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE gl

forth in the little volume known as the Tetrabiblos, or
Quddripartitum. It would seem as if we ought to be able
to regard a book by that noted geographer and astronomer
as an example of the best science of his time, the middle of
the second century. His works quickly became classics, and
in the third century Porphyry commented on the Tetrabiblos.
The Ara:bs eagerly accepted his writings, and it is generally
held that in the Middle Ages his word was law in all the
subjects of which he treated. The Tetrabiblos, therefore,
would seem a landmark in the entire history of astrology
as well as a crucial instance of how that branch of magic
formed a part of science in the Roman Empire. True,
Ptolemy does not cover the whole field of sidereal influence.
He limits himself to the effects of the stars on man and
does not attempt to trace out how they affect all varieties
of matter and of life upon our globe. However, to make
the stars control each individual man is the climax of
astrology and implies that the heavenly bodies govern every-
thing else here on earth. So the Tetrabiblos is a very satis-
factory instance of belief in astrology by a scientist and its
contents may well be briefly considered.^

The first of the four books opens with the trite conten-
tion that the art itself is not to be rejected because fre-

1 The edition of the Tetrabiblos which I used is that by Philip
Melanchthon, 1553. It gives the Greek text, a Latin translation and an
introduction of interest, in which Melanchthon affirms his own more
modest trust in astrology.

Two other treatises of considerable length setting forth the prin-
ciples of astrology and which have come down to us from the Roman
Empire, are a poem consisting of five books of about 900 lines each by
Manilius, probably of the Augustan age; and' a prose treatise in eight
books, and apparently left unfinished, by Firmicus who was a Neo-
Platonist of about 350 a. d. M. Manilii Astronomicon, London, 1828,
Delphin edition. lulii Firmici Matemd Matheseos Libri VIII, (edider-
unt W. KroU et K Skutsch, Lipsiae, 1897, 2 vols., (Teubner edition).
The essay on astrology purporting to be by Lucian is probably spurious.

82 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

quently abused by imposters, and with the admission that
even the skilful investigator often makes mistakes owing to
the incompleteness of human knowledge. In the first place,
our doctrine of the nature of matter rests, Ptolemy says, more
on conjecture than on certain knowledge. Secondly, old con-
figurations of the stars cannot be safely used as the basis of
present-day predictions. Indeed, so many are the different
possible positions of the stars and the different possible
arrangements of terrestrial matter in relation to the stars
that it is difficult to collect enough instances on which to
base judgment. Moreover, such things as diversity of place,
of education and of custom must be reckoned with in fore-
telling the future of persons bom under the same stars.
But although predictions frequently fail, yet the art is not
to be condemned any more than one rejects the art of navi-
gation because of frequent shipwrecks.

Thus far one might take Ptolemy for a well-balanced and
accurate scientist in the modern sense of the term, but he
does not maintain this level. After showing that it is use-
ful to know the future and that astrology does not depend
on fatal necessity, he proceeds to explain why the stars give
knowledge of the future. This he intends to show from
natural causes: iibique naturalium causarum rationem se-
quentes. This sounds well but his reasoning is superficial
and childish, as his discussion of the influence exercised by
che planets will indicate.

In each planet one of the four elemental qualities pre-
dominates (or perhaps two divide the supremacy) and en-
dows the star with a peculiar nature and power. The sun
warms and, to some extent, makes dry, for the nearer it
comes to our pole the more heat and drought it produces.
The moon, on the contrary, causes humidity, since it is
close to the earth and gets the effect of vapors from
the latter. Evidently the moon influences other bodies

83] BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE 83

in this way, rendering them soft and producing putrefac-
tion. It also warms a little owing to the light it receives
from the sun. Saturn, however-, chills and, to some extent,
dries, for it is very far from the heat of the sun and the
damp mists of the earth. Mars emits a parching heat,
as its color and proximity to the sun lead one to infer.
Jupiter, situated between cold Saturn and burning Mars, is
of a sort of lukewarm nature, but tends more to warmth
and moisture than to the other two qualities. So does
Venus, but conversely, for it warms less than Jupiter but
makes moist more, since its large area catches many damp
vapors from the neighboring earth. In Mercury, situated
near the sun, moon and earth, neither drought nor damp-
ness predominates ; but that planet, incited by its own veloc-
ity, is a potent cause of sudden changes. In general, the
planets are of good or evil influence according as they
abound in the two rich and vivifying qualities, heat and
moisture, or in the detrimental and destructive ones, cold
and drought.

Ptolemy then goes on to discuss the powers of fixed stars.
These powers he would seem to make depend chiefly on the
relation of the fixed star to the planets or on its position in
some constellation. Then he treats of the influence of the
seasons and of the four cardinal points, to each of
which he assigns some one predominating quality. A
discussion of the importance of such things as the twelve
signs of the zodiac, the twelve " houses," the Trigones
(equilateral triangles each comprising three signs of the
zodiac), and the position of the star in reference to the
horizon, ends the first book and also the presentation of
fundamental considerations.

The other three books contain "doctrinam de praedictione
singnlarium." The second book, however, deals in the
main with four points of general though subordinate bear-

84 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [84

ing: under what stars different regions belong, how the
effects of the stars vary according to time as well as place,
how the heavenly bodies influence the nature of events, and
finally how they determine their quality, good or bad. The
third and fourth books, besides taking up separately the
particular effects of each planet as it enters into conjunction
with each of the others, comprise chapters with such head-
ings as the following: " de parentibus/' " de fratribtis/^
'' de masculis et femellis," '' de geminis/' '' de natis qtd
nutrire non possunt sed mox extinguuntur" " de dignitate"
'' de magisterio/' " de coniugiis/' " de liberis/' " de amicis
et inimicis" " de servisl' " de perigrinatione," '' de genere
mortis." These two books discuss how length of years, for-
tune, diseases, and various qualities of body and mind may
be predicted from the stars ; in short, how man's entire life
is ordered by the constellations. Such is the book which
Bouche-Leclercq calls " science's surrender." ^

V. The hermetic books and occultism. — An account of
belief in magic in the Roman Empire would be incomplete
without some reference to the famous hermetic books.
Hermes Trismegistus might, as deservedly as any other
man — had he only been a man and not a myth — ^be called
the father of magic, just as he used to be known as the
father of Egyptian science and just as he was r^arded by
many as the inventor of all philosophy.^ In the time of
Plato the Egyptian god Thoth acquired the name of Her-
mes from the similarity of his functions to those of the
Greek god. He also came to be considered as the author
of pretty much all knowledge and was given the epithet of
" Thrice Great." The entire body of Egyptian occult lore

1 " Cetait la capitulaition de la science." Rev. Hist, vol. Ixv, /p. 257,
note 3.

2 Roger Bacon, Opus Minus, Rolls Series, vol. xv, p. 313, speaks of
"Hermes Mercurius, pater philosophorum."

85] BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE 85

was attributed to him, and Manetho, who pictured him as
reigning over the ancient Egyptians, declared tliat in addi-
tion to his royal duties he succeeded in turning oflf some
36,000 volumes. Clement of Alexandria, however, speaks
of but forty-two books as " indispensably necessary," and
says that the priests having charge of the hermetic books,
by memorizing these forty-two, cover the entire philosophy
of the Egyptians.^ Diocletian is said to have dispersed the
priests and burned their books, because he came to the con-
clusion that the frequent revolts in the locality received
pecuniary aid by means of gold artificially manufactured
in the temples.^ Before that, however, lore supposed
to be similar to that contained within the books had be-
come disseminated. In the days of Hadrian and the An-
tonines, Jews and other Orientals at Rome offered to initiate
persons into those occult sciences previously the monopoly
of the Egyptian priesthood. Marcus Aurelius, in his later
years, was thus instructed by an E^ptian diviner, who fol-
lowed him in all his campaigns.' Also the custom grew
up rather early of passing off works on occult subjects
under Hermes' name and of ascribing to him all such books
which were of doubtful authorship. Of alchemy was this
tendency especially true, so that it came to be known as the
hermetic art. Sosimus, Stephanus and other Greek writers
cited alchemical treatises under Hermes' name, and the prac-
tice of publishing spurious hermetic books continued well into

1 Stromata, ,bk. vi, ch. 4.

2 Ammianus Marcellinus, 'however, writing during the latter fourth
century, says of Egypt : " Hie primum homines longe ante alios ad varia
religionum incunabula, ut dicitur, pervenerunt et initia prima sacrorum
caute tuentur condita scriptis arcanis." Bk. xxii, ch. xvi, sec. 20,
Again, in bk. xxii, ch. xiv, sec. 7, Ammianus speaks of the Egyptian
mystical books as still extant.

8 F. J. Champagny, Les AntoninSy vol. iii, p. 81 (Paris, 1863).

86 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [86

the Middle Ages.^ Several such alchemical treatises are
still extant; and writings on astrological medicine and the
magical powers of gems, plants and animals have also come
down to us tmder Hermes' name.*

Some of the supposed writings of Hermes were mystical
rather than magical; for instance, the famous Poemander*
which consists mainly of brief and disconnected utterances
concerning God and the human soul and other subjects of
a religious character. Still, one does not have to read far
into its sixteen "books" before finding evidence of belief in
astrology, of the mysticism of number and of an esoteric view
of knowledge. It tells us " to avoid all conversation with
the multitude " and to " take heed of them as not tmder-
standing the virtue and power of the things that are said."
It speaks frequently of the seven circles of heaven, the seven
zones, and the seven " Governors." It affirms that " the

1 See article on " Hermes " in La Grande Encyclopidie by Berthelot
wiho has made an exten-ded study of the history of aldhemy; and who,
in his La Chitnie au Moyen Age holds that Greek alchemistic treat-
ises were continuously extant in Italy during the Dark Ages — a cir-
cumstance which diminishes the importance of Arabian influence on
the study of the hermetic art in tflie later Middle Ages.

2 See Anthonys Classical Dictionary^ 1855 (no adequate account of
Hermes Trismegistus exists in any of the more recent classical diction-
aries).

8 The Poemander (or Pymander) has been reproduced in the Bath
Occult Reprint Series (London, 1884) from the translation "from
the Arabic by Dr. Everard, 1650." It has an introduction by Hargrave
Jennings, " author of the Rosicrucians," giving some account of Hermes
Trismegistus. Vol. ii in the same Bath Occult Reprint Series — which
seems to have been instituted on behalf of "students of the occult
sciences, searchers after truth and Theosophists " — is Hermes' Virgin
of the World. Besides Berthelofs article, an account of Hermes may
be found in pages 181-190 of The Literary Remains of the late Eman-
uel Deutsch (London, 1879). There is a French translation of the
Poemander by Menard with an introductory essay which, however,
Deutsdh characterized as "deploraibly shallow."

87] BEUEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE 87

Gods were seen in their Ideas of the Stars with all their
signs, and the stars were numbered with the Gods in
them." Hence, it is probably safe enough, when, for in-
stance, we hear that Theon, father of Hypatia, celebrated in
his day as a mathematician, and professor at the Alexan-
drian Museum, lectured upon the writings of Hermes Tris-
m^stus and of Orpheus ^ — another legendary worthy
charged with works of an occult character — to conclude
that we have met one more case of the mingling of magic
with learning.

In short, then, the mythical figure of Hermes Trismegis-
tus became an actuating ideal to the Middle Ages, and the
works appearing imder his name had a considerable influ-
ence in extending belief in magic. Secondly, the hermetic
books serve to typify that mass of Eastern occult philosophy
and occult science which was so strong a force in the mental
life of the Roman En^pire.

1 J. B. Bury, Later Roman Empire (N. Y., 1899), vol. i, p. 208.

CHAPTER VI

Critics of Magic

The reader will remember how men in the Roman Em-
pire condemned " magic " but understood the word in a
restricted and bad sense; how Pliny made pretensions to
complete freedom from all belief in magic and how incon-
sistent was his actual attitude; how Seneca rejected magic
only in part, accepting divination in all its ramifications.
This partial rejection and partial acceptance of magic by
the same individual seem characteristic of the age of the
Empire, as one would expect of a time when magic was in
a state of decay and science in a process of development.
It is true that this rejection of certain varieties of magic
often proceeded from the motive of morality rather than of
scepticism. Thus in Cicero's De Divinatione, Quintus
Cicero is represented as closing his long argument in favor
of the truth of divination by solemnly asserting that he
does not approve of sorcerers, nor of those who prophesy
for sake of gain, nor of the practice of questioning spirits
of the dead — which nevertheless, he says, was a custom of
his brother's friend Appius.^ But there were some men,
we may well believe, who would reject even those varieties
of magic which found a welcome in the minds of most edu-
cated people and in the general mass of the thought and
science of the age. Such cases we shall now consider.

^ De Dimnatione, bk. i, ch. 58. "Haec habui, inquit, de divinatione
quae dicerem. Nunc ilia testabor non me sortilegos neque eos qui qua-
estus causa hariolentur, ne psychomantia quidem quibus Appius amicus
tuus uti solebat, agnoscere."

88 [88

89] CRITICS OF MAGIC 89

I. Opponents of astrology. — ^Astrology, as we have seen,
was very popular. Yet there was some scepticism as to its
truth beyond the ridicule of satirists, who perhaps at bot-
tom were themselves believers in the art. Outside of Chris-
tian writers the three chief opponents of astrology in the
Roman world, judging by the works that have come down
to us, were Cicero — who lived before the Empire in the
constitutional sense can be said to have begun — in his De
Diznnatione ; Favorinus, a Gaul who resided at Rome in the
reigns of Hadrian and Trajan, and was a friend of Plu-
tarch, and whose arguments against astrology have been
preserved only in the pages of Aulus GelHus; and Sextus
Empiricus, a physician who flourished at about the begin-
ning of the third century of our era.^

When, however, we come to examine both the men and
their arguments, we somehow do not find their assault upon
astrology especially impressive or satisfactory. First, as to
the men. Gellius says that he heard Favorinus make the
speech the substance of which he repeats, but that he is un-
able to state whether the philosopher really meant what he
said or argued merely in order to exercise and to display
his genius.^ There was reason for this perplexity of Gel-

1 For the arguments of Favorinus, see Aulus Gellius, Nodes Atticae,
bk. xiv; ch. i. (Delphin & Variorum Classics [1824] ex editione Jacohi
Gronovii.) Fragments of Favorinus's writings are also to be found in
Stobaeus.

The edition of the Opera of Sextus Empiricus which I used was
that by Johannes Albertus Fabricus, (Lipsiae, 1718), giving the Greek
text and a Latin translation.

For Cicero's arguments, see De Divinatione, bk. ii, chs. 42-47.

2 " Adversum istos qui sese chaldaeos seu genethliacos appellant, ac
de motu deque positu stellarum dicere posse, quae futura sunt, pro-
fitentur, audivimus quondam Favorinum philosophum Romae Graecc
disserentem egregia atque illustri oratione; exercendine autcm, anne
ostentandi gratia ingenii, an quod ita serio judicatoque existamarct, non
habeo dicere. Nodes Atticae, bk. xiv, ch. i, sect. i. A foot-note in the

go MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [90

lius, since Favorinus was fond of writing such essays as
Eulogies of Thersites and of Quartan Fever. There is no
particular reason for doubting Sextus's seriousness, but, be-
sides being a medical man, he was a member of the sceptical
school of philosophy, a circumstance which warns one not
to attribute too much emphasis to his attack on astrology.
Indeed, the attack occurs in a work directed against learn-
ing in general, in which he assails grammarians, rhetor-
icians, geometricians, arithmeticians, students of music,
logicians, "physicists," and students of ethics as well as
astrologers. Cicero was not prone to such sweeping scep-
ticism or sophistry, but the force of his opposition to astrol-
ogy is somewhat neutralized by the fact that in his Dream
of Scipio he apparently attributes to planets influence over
man.

Now as to their arguments. We have spoken of their
" attack on astrology,'' but in reality they can scarcely be
said to attack astrology as a whole. Indeed, it is the doc-
trines of the Chaldeans which Cicero makes the object of
his assault; he says nothing about astrology. Favorinus
will not even admit that he attacks the " disciplina Chal-
daeorum " in any true sense, but affirms that the Chaldeans
were not the authors of such theories at all, but that these
have originated of late among traveling fakirs who beg
their bread by means of such deceits and trickeries.^ Some
of the arguments of our sceptics are really directed merely

Delphin edition expresses preference in place af the words "exer-
cendine autein, anne ostentendi" for the shorter reading "exercendi
autem, non ostentandi" — which reading is adopted by Hertz in his
edition of the year, 1885.

1 " Disciplinam istam Chaldaeorum tantae vetustatis non esse, quantae
videri volunt; neque eos principes eius auctoresque esse, quos ipsi fer-
ant: sed id praestigiarum atque offuciarum genus commentos esse
homines aeruscatores, et cibum quaestumque ex mendaciis captantes."
Nodes Atticae, bk. xiv, ch. i, sect. 2.

.^^1*

gi] CRITICS OF MAGIC 91

against the methods of interpreting the decrees of the stars
which they give us to understand that the astrologers employ.
Such objections might suffice to pierce the presumption of
the ordinary popular astrologer but they fall back blunted
from the system of Ptolemy/ If our sceptics thought that
they were overthrowing the astrology of the man of learn-
ing by such arguments, they labored under a misapprehen-
sion, and in the eyes of one who really imderstood the art
must have cut the figure of ignoramuses making false
charges against a science of which they knew next to
nothing.

As some of the arguments of our sceptics apply solely to
defects in method of which the best astrologers were not
guilty, so others do not deny the existence of sidereal influ-
ence over the life of man, but contend that it is impossible
to determine with essential accuracy what will be the effects
of that influence. Sextus, for example, seems to lay most
stress upon such points as the difficulty of exactly determin-
ing the date of birth or of conception, or the precise moment
when a star passes into a new sign of the zodiac. He calls
attention to the fact that observers at varying altitudes, as
well as in different localities, would arrive at different con-
clusions, that differences in eyesight would also affect re-
sults, and that it is hard to tell just when the sun sets owing

^ For mstance, the charge that astrologers disr^ard the diflFering
aspects of the heavens in diflFerent regions does not hold true in the
case of Ptolemy. Also the objection to the doctrine of nativities, that
men born at different times often suffer a common fate in battle or
some such general disaster, is a weak argument at best, for the
fact that you and I are born under different stars does not necessitate
that our careers have absolutely nothing in common, and it was nulli-
fied by Ptolemy's explanation that great general events like earth-
quakes, wars, floods and plagues overrule any contradictory destiny
which the constellations may seem to portend for the individual. See
Bouche-Leclerq, Rev. Hist, vol. Ixv, p. 268.

92 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [92

to refraction/ He almost becomes scholastic in the minute-
ness of his objections, leaving us somewhat in doubt whether
they are to be taken as indicative of a spirit of captious
criticism towards an art the fundamental principles of which
he tacitly recognized as well-nigh incontestible, or whether
he is simply trying to make his case doubly sure by showing
astrology to be impracticable as well as unreasonable.

The main thing to be noted about Cicero, Favorinus and
Sextus is that they pay almost no attention to the general
problem of sidereal influence on terrestrial matter and life.
It is to the denial of an absolute, complete and immutable
rule of the heavenly bodies over man that they devote their
energies. The premises of astrology they leave pretty much
alone. One might accept almost all their statements and
still believe in a large influence of the stars over our physi-
cal characteristics and mental traits. The question of
sidereal influence upon lower animal life, vegetation and
inert matter they avoid with a sneer. ^

1 Similarly Favorinus declared that, if the diflFerent fate of twins
was to he explained hy the fact that after all they are not horft at
precisely the same moment, then to determine one's -destiny the time
of his birth and the position of the stars at the same instant must be
measured with an exactness practically impossible. "A/tque id velim
etiam, inquit, ut respondeant: si tam parvum atque rapidum est mo-
mentum temporis, in quo homo nascens fatum accipit, ut in eodem illo
puncto, sub eodem circulo coeli, plures simul ad eamdem competentiam
nasci non queant; et si idcirco gemini quoque non eadem vitae sorte
sunt, quoniam non eodem temporis puncto editi sunt; peto, inquit, re-
spondeant, cursum ilium temporis transvolantis, qui vix cogitatione animi
comprehendi potest, quonam pacto aut consulto assequi queant, aut ipsi
perspicere et deprehendere ; quum in tam praecipiti dierum noctiumque
vertigine minima momenta ingentes facere dicant mutationes." Nodes
AtticaCf bk. xiv, ch. i, sect. 10.

2 Favorinus declares that the astrologers may congratulate them-
selves that he does not propose such a question to them as that
of astral influence on minute animals; Cicero says that if all animals

^3] CRITICS OF MAGIC 93

II. Cicero's attack upon divination, — ^A more satisfactory
example of scepticism may be found in other chapters of
the De Divinatione than those which assail the art of the
Chaldeans. Moreover, although the discussion is limited
to the specific theme of divination, still that is a subject
which admits of very broad interpretation, and Cicero em-
ploys some arguments which are capable of an even wider
application and oppose the hypotheses on which magic in
general rests. He rejects divination as unscientific. It is
to such arguments that we shall confine our attention.
" Natural divination," that is, predictions made under direct
divine inspiration without interposition of signs and por-
tents, is not magic and so the discussion of it will not con-
cern us. Much less shall we waste any time over such trite
contentions against divination in general as that there is no
use of knowing predetermined events since you cannot avoid
them,^ and that even if we can learn the future we shall be
happier not to do it.

are to be subjected to tihe stars, then inanimate diings must be too,
than which nothing could be more absurd.

" Illud autem condonare se iis dicebat, quod non id quoque requireret,
si vitae mortisque hominum rerumque humanarum omnium tempus et
ratio et causa in coelo et apud Stellas foret, quid de muscis aut vermi-
culis aut echinis, multisque aliis minutissimis terra marique animantibus,
diicerent? An ista quoque isdem, quibus homines, legibus nascerentur,
isdemque itidem exstinguerentur." Aulus Gellius, Nodes Atticae, bk.
xiv, ch. I, sect. 12.

" Et si ad rem pertinet, quo modo coelo affecto compositisque sideri-
bus quodque animal oriatur; valeat id necesse est etiam in rebus
inanimis. Quo quid dici potest absurdius ?" De Divin., bk. ii, ch. 47.

Favorinus, however, does hint in one place that the sole evidence
that we possess of any influence of the stars upon us is a few such
causal connections as that between the phases of the moon and the
tides of the ocean.

1 Ptolemy made a fair retort to this argument by holding that fore-
knowledge, even if it could not enable us to avoid the coming event, at
least served the purpose o^ breaking the news gently and saving us the
more vivid shock which the actual event, if unexpected, would cause
by its raw reality.

94 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [94

De Divinatione takes the form of a suppositious conver-
sation, or better, informal debate, between the author and
his brother Quintus. In the first book Quintus, in a rather
rambhng and leisurely fashion, and with occasional repe-
tition of ideas, upholds divination to the best of his ability,
citing many reported instances of successful recourse to it
in antiquity. In the second book Tully proceeds, with an
air of somewhat patronizing superiority, to pull entirely to
pieces the arguments of his brother, who assents with cheer-
ful readiness to their demolition.

It is interesting to note that as Pliny's magic was not his
own, so Cicero's scepticism did not originate wholly with
himself. As his other philosophical writings draw their
material largely from Greek philosophy, so the second book
of the De Divinatione is supposed to have been under con-
siderable obligations to Clitomachus and Panaetius.^ As
for the future, the De Divinatione was known in the Middle
Ages but its influence seems to have often been scarcely that
intended by its author.

One of the main points in the argument of Quintus had
been his appeal to the past. What race or state, he asked,
has not believed in some form of divination?

For before the revelation of philosophy, which was discovered
recently, public opinion had no doubt of the truth of this art ;
and after philosophy came forth no philosopher of authority
thought otherwise. I have mentioned Pythagoras, Democritus,
Socrates. I have left out no one of the ancients save Xeno-
phanes. I have added the Old Academy, the Peripatetics, the
Stoics. Epicurus alone dissented.^

^ See T. Schiohe, De Fontibus Lihrorum Ciceronis qui sunt de
Divinatione, (Jena, 1875) and K. Hartfelder, Die Quellen von Ciceros
zwei BUchern de Divinatione (Freiburg, 1878).

2 Bk. i, ch. 39. " Neque ante philosophiam patefactam, quae nuper

95] CRITICS OF MAGIC 95

When TuUy's turn to speak came, he rudely disturbed
his brother's reliance upon tradition. " I think it not the
part of a philosopher to employ witnesses, who are only
haply true, often purposely false and deceiving. He ought
to show why a thing is so by arguments and reasons, not
by events, especially those I cannot credit." ^ "Antiquity,"
Cicero declared later, " has erred in many respects." ^ The
existence of the art of divination in every age and nation
had little effect upon him. There is nothing, he asserted, so
widespread as ignorance.*

Both brothers distinguished divination from the natural
sciences and assigned it a place by itself.* Quintus said that
medical men, pilots and farmers foresee many things, yet
their arts are not divination. " Not even Pherecydes, that
famous Pythagorean master, who prophesied an earthquake
when he saw there was no water in a well usually full,
should be regarded as a diviner rather than a physicist." ^
In like manner Tully pointed out that the sick seek a doctor,
not a soothsayer, that diviners cannot instruct us in astron-

inventa est, hac de re communis vita du'bitavit ; et postea, quam pihilosa-
phia processit, nemo aliter philosophus sensit, in quo modo esset auc-
toritas. Dixi de P3rthagora, de Demoorite, de Socrate; excepi de anti-
quis praeter Xenophanem neminem; adiunxi veterem academiam, peri-
pateticos, stoicos. Unus dissentit Epicurus." This trust in tradition, it
may ibe here observed, formed one of the chief grounds for mediaeval
belief in magic as well.

^ Bk. ii, ch. II. "Hoc ego philosophi non arbitror, testibus uti, qui
aut casu veri aut malitia falsi fictique esse possunt. Argumentis et
rationibus oportet quare quidque ita sit docere, non eventis, iis praeser-
tim quibus mihi liceat non credere."

2 Bk. ii, ch. 33. " Errabat enim multis in rebus antiquitas."

» Bk. ii, ch. 36.

* As Tully (bk. ii, ch. 5) puts it, " Quae enim praesentiri aut arte
aut ratione aut usu aut oonjectura possunt, ea non divinis tribuenda
putas sed peritis."

5 Bk. i, ch. 50.

gg MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [96

omy, that no one consults them- concerning philosophic
problems or ethical questions, that they can give us no light
on the problems of the natural universe, and that they are
of no service in logic, dialectic or political science.^ Such
would be the ideal condition, but in practice, as we have
seen much reason to believe, divination, at least in the broad
sense, was confused with science and with other subjects to
no small extent both under the Empire and in the Middle
Ages. A doctor might be something of a diviner as well : the
astrologer was skilled in astronomy; "mathematicus" came
within a short time after Cicero's own day to be the word
regularly used to denote a soothsayer ; ^ Pierre du Bois and
Bodin found astrology an aid to political science.

Cicero, however, went further than the assertion that
divination had no connection with science and declared that
it was contrary to science. Such a figment, he scornfully
affirmed, as that the heart will vanish from a corpse for one
man's benefit and remain in the body to suit the future of
another, was not believed even by old wives now-a-days.'
Nay more, he asked, how can the heart vanish from- the
body? Surely it must be there while life lasts, and can it
disappear in an instant?

Believe me, you are abandoning the citadel of philosophy
while you defend its outposts. For in your effort to prove
soothsaying true you utterly pervert physiology. . . . For there
will be something which either springs from nothing or sud-
denly vanishes into nothingness. What scientist ever said that ?
The soothsayers say so? Are they then, do you think, to
be trusted rather than scientists ? *

Cicero does not think they are.

^ Bk. ii, chs. 3, 4.

2 We saw Pliny use " mathematicae artes " as an equivalent of
divination or astrology.

^ Bk. ii, ch. 15.

* Bk. ii, ch. 16. " Urbem phiiosophiae, mihi crede, proditis dum

97] CRITICS OF MAGIC 97

Also he shows that the methods of divination are not
scientific. He asks: Why did Calchas deduce from the
devoured sparrow that the Trojan war would last ten years
rather than ten weeks or ten months ? ^ He points out that
the art is conducted in different places according to quite
different rules of procedure, even to the extent that a favor-
able omen in one locality is a sinister warning elsewhere.*
In short, whether he got his idea from the Greeks or not,
he has come, long before most men had reached that point,
to have a clear idea of the essential contradiction between
science and magic. " Quid igitur," he asks, " minus a
physicis dici debet quam quidquam certi significari rebus
incertis ?" *

Besides this sharp separation of divination from science
and besides his rejection of tradition, a third creditable
feature of Cicero's book is his question: What intimate
connection, what bond of natural causality can there be be-
tween the liver or heart or lung of a fat bull and the divine
eternal cause of things which rules the world ? * He re-
fuses to believe in any extraordinary bonds of sympathy
between things which, in so far as our daily experience and

castella defenditis. Nam dum aruspicinam veram esse vultis, pihy-
siologiam totam pervertitis. Caput est in jecore, cor in extis: iam ab-
scedet, simul ac molam et vinum insperseris; deus id eripiet, vis aliqua
conficiet, aut exedet Non ergo omnium anteritus atque obitus natura
coniiciet ; et erit aliquid quod aut ex nihilo oriatur, aut in nihilum subito
occidat. Quis hoc physicus dixit unquam ? Aruspices dicunt ? His
igitur quam physicis potius credendum existimas?"

1 Bk. ii, ch. 28. 2 Bk. ii, ch. 12. « Bk. ii, ch. 19.

* Bk ii, dh. 12. "Atqui divina cum rerum natura tanta tamquo
praeclara in omnes partes motusque diffusa, quid habere potest com-
mune, non dicam gallinacum fel (sunt enim qui vel argutissima haec
exta esse dicant) sed tauri opimi jecur aut cor aut pulmo, quid habet
naturale, quo deolarari possit quid futurum sit?"

gg MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [98

our knowledge of nature's workings can inform us, have
absolutely no connection. He appeals to the canons of
common sense. In fact, it is generally true throughout his
treatise that where he cannot disprove, he pooh-poohs super-
stition.

On the whole Cicero's attitude probably represents the
most enlightened scepticism to be found in the ancient world.
Though some of his arguments seem weak, he deserves
credit for having argued at all. Against what they were
pleased to call magic, men, especially during the Middle
Ages, were apt to rant rather than reason.

But, alas, unless we assume that the famous Dream of
Scipio is a purely imaginative production, that the fantastic
beliefs there set forth (borrowed, no doubt, from Gredc
thought) are presented for dramatic purposes alone and do
not represent Cicero's actual views, we must grant that our
scq)tical Cicero believed in some magic after all. For the
Drcmn, despite its author's animadversions against Chal-
daeaii astrology, speaks of Jupiter as a star wholesome and
favorable to the human race, of Mars as most unfavorable.^
Also it calls the numbers seven and eight perfect and speaks
of their product as signifying the fatal year in Scipio's
career.'

i '* Deinde est hominmn generi prospenis et salutaris ille f ulgor qui
dicitur Jovis. Turn rutilus horribilisque terris, quern Martium dicitis.
Deinde subter mediam fere regionem Sol obtinet^ dux et princeps et
moderator lusninum reliquonim, mens xnundi et temperatio," etc,

s'^Nam cum aetas tua septenos octies solis anfractus reditusque
asverterit, duoque fai numeri, quorum uterque plenus, alter altera de
lidietnr, ciicuitu natural! summam tibi fatalem confecerint, etcP

CHAPTER VII

The Last Century of the Empire

We come now to consider some indications of the inter-
mixture of magic with learning in the last century of the
Roman Empire, the border-time of the Middle Ages. It
was a time when interest in science was slight and when
the ability to use florid rhetoric was apparently the chief
aim of those who assumed to be the highest intellectual
class. What science there was was largely permeated with
magic, as a glance at a few men of intellectual prominence
then will illustrate. I

Marcellus of Bordeaux, court physician of Theodosius I,
and a writer upon medicine, throws some light upon the
state of medicine in his day. He affirmed that pimples
might be removed by wiping them the instant you saw a
falling-star. He said that a tumor could be cured if one
half of a root of vervain were tied about the sufferer's neck
and the other half suspended over a fire. His theory was
that as the vervain dried up in the smoke of the fire, the
tumor would by force of magic sympathy likewise dry up
and disappear. Marcellus added for the benefit of unpaid
physicians that so persistent would be the sympathetic bond
established that if the root of the vervain were later thrown
into water, its absorption of moisture would produce a re-
turn of the tumor. ^

Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote at the close of the

1 These recipes are given in Frazer*s Golden Bough, vol. i, p. 23, from
the De Medicamentis of Marcellus, bk. xv, ch. 82 and bk. xxxiv, di. 100.
99] 99

lOO MAGIC IS ISTELLECTUAL HISTORY [loo

foorth ccntmy, and who has been regarded by his critics
from Gibbon down as a historian of disdi^^uished merit,
gives OS an idea of mental conditions in his time, and was
himsdf not free from belief in magic It is true that in de-
claiming against the d^neneracy of the Roman aristocracy
he ridictiles their trust in astrcrfogy, saying that many of
them deny the existence of higher powers in heaven, yet
diink it imprudent to Bppe^r in poblic or dine or take a bath
without first ha\~ii^ consuked an almanac as to Merctuy's
whereabouts or the exact position of the mocn in Cancer.^
Yet he believed in omens, portents and auspices, as the fol-
lowing citations will indicate and as one might show by
other passages.

The first passage is one in which Ammianus speaks of
Alexandria as formerly having been a great place of leam-
ii^ and as e>-en in his degenerate days a considerable in-
tellectual centre. According to him, it is a sufficient rec-
ommendaticHi for any medical man if he say that he was
educated at Alexandria.*

There whatever lies hidden is laid bare by g^ecxnetry; music

1 Ammianas Marcellinus. R^rum gestarmm Hbri qui supersMUt. F.
Eyssenhardt recensuit. Berlin, 1871. Book xxviii, ch. iv, sec 24.
'^ Muld apud eos negantes esse soperas potcstates in caelo, nee in publico
prodeunt nee prandent nee lavari arbitrantor se caotins posse, anteqnam
ephemeride scmpulose sciscitata didiceiint. nlw sit vcrbi gratia sigmun
Mercurii, vel quotam cancri sideris partem polnm discurrens i^^dneat
luna." Very likel>% however, .\mnuanu$ — whom we shall see defending
divination in general — himself cherished a moderate tmst in astit^ogy
and was rather satirizing the tntkiclity of the nobles — their incon-
sistency in so minutely ruling their Itxt^ by the planets when Aey
denied the existence of " su^^era^i \Hnv^sult?t m *\wfv.»." There is an Eng-
lish translation of Ammianus by C IV YvMX^e (London, 1862; Bohn
Library).

* Ibid., bk. xxii, di. xy\» »ec> ^H^ *^ Fro omni tamcn experimento
sufficiat medico ad commeiHUuvUm «rtU »uctoritatenu si .\lexandriae
se dixerit emdittmL"

lOi] THE LAST CENTURY OF THE EMPIRE loi

is not utterly forgotten nor harmony neglected; among some
men, though their number may not be great, the motion of the
world and stars is still a matter of consideration; there are
not a few of those skilled in numbers.

This is not all. " Besides these things they cherish the
science which reveals the decrees of fate." ^

The Emperor Julian was continually inspecting entrails
of victims and interpreting dreams and omens, and even
proposed to reopen a prophetic fountain which Hadrian
was said to have blocked up for fear that others, like him-
self, might win the imperial throne through obedience to
its predictions.^ The mention of such practices of Julian
leads Ammianus in another passage to attempt a justifica-
tion of divination as a science worthy of the study and re-
spect of the most erudite and intelligent. He says :

Inasmuch as to this ruler, who was a man of culture and an
inquirer into all branches of learning, malicious persons have
attributed the use of evil arts to learn the future, we shall
briefly indicate how a wise man is able to acquire this by no
means trivial variety of knowledge. The spirit behind all the
elements, seeing that it is incessantly and everywhere active
in the prophetic movement of everlasting bodies, bestows upon
us the gift of divination by those methods which we acquire
through divers studies; and the forces of nature, propitiated
by various rites, as from exhaustless springs provide mankind
with prophetic utterances.^

^ Ihid.y bk. xxii, ch. xvi, sec. 17. " Et quamquam veteres cum his,
quorum memini floruere conplures, tamen ne nunc quidem in eadem
urbe doctrinae variae silent; nam et disciplinarum magistri quodam
modo sipirant et nudatur ibi geometrico radio quidquid reconditum latet,
nondumque apud eos penitus exaruit musica nee harmonica conticuit,
et recalet apud quosdam adhuc licet raros consideratio mundani motus
et siderum, doctique §unt numeros hau-d pauci ; super his scientiam Cal-
ient quae factorum vias ostendit."

2 Bk. xxii, ch. xii, sec. 8.

» Bk. xxi, ch. i, sec. 7. " Et quoniam erudito et studioso cognitionum

m <* ^ ^ •

»- -.

,• •,

• •• •

• • •
•••••

• •> '•

* » •• •

I02 Mi4G/C /AT INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [102

That is, we can fordcnow, if not control, the results of the
processes of universal nature. Since it is through the
forces of nature that we do this, augury, oracular utter-
ances, oneiromancy and astrology all become for Ammianus
but subdivisions of physical science. He admits that there
are persons who disagree with him, who object that pre-
dictions are often erroneous; but against such persons he
employs the old refutation that occasional mistakes are to
be attributed to man's imperfect knowledge and faulty ol>
servation, and that by such mistakes the validity of divina-
tion is no more disproved than is grammar forever discred-
ited because a grammarian speaks incorrectly, or music
because a musician sings out of tune.^ Opposition to the
arts of divination he calls "vanities plebeia," and upon such
loud-mouthed ignorance of the vulgar he looks down
with much the same superior smile that the lover of specu-
lative philosophy to-day bestows upon the man in the street
who irritably disputes the utility of that subject.

Indeed, the strength of Ammianus's attachment to divi-
nation is so great that he quotes its arch-opponent, Cicero,
in its support. For he concludes his discussion of the sub-
ject in these words : " Wherefore in this as in other matters
Tully says most admirably, * Sig^s of future events are
shown by the gods.' " * Unless perchance Ammianus was

omnium principi malivoli praenoscendi futura pravas artes adsignant,
advertendum est breviter imde sapienti viro hoc quoque accidere potent
doctrinae genus haud leve, Elementorum omnium spiritus, utpote
perennium corporum praesentendi motu semper et ubique vigens ex his
quae per disciplinas varias affectamus, participat nobiscum munera
divinandi; et substantiales potestates ritu diverso placatae, velut ex
perpetviis fontium venis vaticina mortalitati subpeditant verba."

^ Bk. xxi, ch. i, sec 13.

2 Bk. xxi, ch. i, sec. 14. " Unde praeclare hoc quoque ut alia Tullius
' signa ostenduntur ' ait * a dis rerum futurarum.' " " Dis " seem to be
practically identical in Ammianus's mind with natural forces.

I03] THE LAST CENTURY OF THE EMPIRE 103

acquainted with the first book only of De Dwinatione, this
remark — which ought to have proved more potent than any
necromantic spell in invoking Cicero's slandered Manes —
must be taken as a startling revelation of the mental calibre
of both its maker and his age.

Synesius (370-430 a. d.), Bishop of Ptolemais, furnishes
a good example of what was probably the position of the
average Neo-Platonist who did not go to extremes in the
last period of the Roman Empire. In the present survey
we are not concerned with Christian belief in the Empire,
and so it is only as a Neo-Platonist that Synesius will at
present interest us. He is the more interesting for us in
that he was a man with some taste for science. He knew
some medicine and was well acquainted with geometry and
astronomy, subjects which he probably studied under his
friend Hypatia. He believed himself to be the inventor
of an astrolable and of a hydroscope. He played his
part in secular politics and as bishop defended his peo-
ple from oppression. He was fond of the chase and
of his dogs and horses, and said so. He was a great
lover of books also, but thought that their true use
was to call one's own mental powers into action. Phil-
osophy, mathematics and literature all claimed his attention.
Yet broad and independent-minded as he was for his age,
and interested as he was in science, he believed in magic.
Indeed, there was apparently no form of magic in which
he would not have believed.

Synesius regarded the universe as a upit and all its parts
as closely correlated. This belief not only led him to main-
tain, like Seneca, that whatever had a cause was a sign of
some future event, or to hold with Plotinus that in any
and every object the sage might discern the future of every
other thing, and that the birds themselves, if endowed with
sufficient intelligence, would be able to predict the future by

I04 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [104

observing the movements of human bipeds.^ It led him
also to the conclusion that the various parts of the universe
were more than passive mirrors in which one might see
the future of the other parts ; that they further exerted, by
virtue of the magic sympathy which united all parts of the
universe, a potent active influence over other objects and
occurrences. The wise man might not only predict the
future; he might, to a great extent, control it.

For it must be, I think, that of this whole, so joined in sym-
pathy and in agreement, the parts are closely connected as if
members of a single body. And does not this explain the
spells of the magi? For things, besides being signs of each
other, have magic power over each other. The wise man, then,
is he who knows the relationships of the parts of the universe.
For he draws one object under his control by means of another
object, holding what is at hand as a pledge for what is far
away, and working through sounds and material substances
and forms.^

Synesius explained that plants and stones are related by

^TLeplhwrviuv. (On Dreams) ch. 2. Synesii Cyrendei Quae Extant
Opera Omnia, lo. Georgius Krabinger. Landishuti, mdcccl. Tomus
I.) All following references to and quotations from the works of
Synesius apply to this edition. There is a French translation with
several introductory essays by H. Druon, Paris, 1878. For an account
in English of Synesius and his writings see W. S. Crawford, Synesius
the Hellene, London, 1901. See also, H. O. Taylor, Classical Heritage
of the Middle Ages, pp. 78-82, New York, 1901. This interesting work
gives illustrations in various fields of the continuity of culture during
the transition from Roman times to the Middle Ages.

^Uspl kinjirviijv [On Dreams) ch. 3. 'Ede* ydp, olimi^ Tov iravrdg tovtov
avjiiradovg re dvrog Kal avfiirvov ra fjiprj irpoa^KELV ak\ip\jOLq^ are evbg 6Aov rd fiiTnj
Tvyx^vovra, Kal fiij irore al fidycjv Ivyyeg avTai- Kal yap di2,yeTai trap a?JJf7uuv^
Ctairep arffiaiveTai' Kal ao(l>bg 6 eldag rrjv tuv fiepcjv tov Kdofiov avyytveiav, 'E/l/cei
yap IlTOm 61 oTJMVy ix^^ evexvpa irapdwa rav irTieltTTOv dirdvrcjv^ Kal ^(jvdg, Kal

i^ag Kal ax^fiara Evidently Synesius did not regard the magi as

mere imposters.

I05] THE LAST CENTURY OF THE EMPIRE 105

bonds of occult sympathy to the gods who are within the
universe and who form a part of it, that plants and stones
have magic power over these gods, and that one may by
means of such material substances attract those deities.^
He evidently believed that it was quite legitimate to control
the processes of nature by invoking demons. His devotion
to divination has been already implied. He regarded it as
among the noblest of human pursuits.^ Dreams he viewed
as significant and very useful events. They aided him, he
wrote, in his every-day life, and had upon one occasion
saved him from magic devices against his life.* Of course,
he had faith in aerology. The stars were wdl-nigh ever
present in his thought. In his Praise of Baldness he char-
acterized comets as fatal omens, as harbingers of the worst
public disasters.* In On Providence he explained the sup-
posed fact that history repeats itself by the periodical re-
turn to their former positions of the stars which govern
our life.*^ In On the Gift of an Astrolabe he declared that
" astronomy " besides being itself a noble science, prepared
men for the diviner mysteries of theology.* Finally, he
held the view common among students of magic that knowl-
edge should be esoteric; that its mysteries and marvels
should be confined to the few fitted to receive them and that
they should be expressed in language incomprehensible to
the vulgar crowd. "^

^Tlepl eWTTvicoVf ch. 3. Kal drj Koi de(p rivl tgw elatj rob Kdofwv ?iidog kvdMe
Kol pordvTj irpoa^KEij olg d^oioTraOov eIkel ry (phaet koI yorfTeverai, In his Praise
of Baldness {^aXdKpag kyK^fiLov), ch. 10, Synesius tells how the Egyptians
attract demons by magic influences.

' Uspi kwKviuv^ ch. I. Avrat fi^v airodel^eig karuw tov fMvreiav h roig dpioroic
elvai TGJv hiTLTrjdevoiitvQv avOp/jiroig.

*Ibid,y ch. 18. *^aXdKpac kyiUjfiiov, ch. 10.

^ AlyiiTTioi ^ irepl Trpovoiag, bk. ii, ch. 7.

•npdf iraidvwv ire pi tov 66pov^ ch. 5.

^Atwv, ch. 7. U.£pi kwTTviuVy ch. 4. 'ETTttrroAat, 4 and 49.

Io6 MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [io6

Macrobius, who wrote at the beginning of the fifth cen-
tury and displayed considerable interest in physical ques-
tions for a person of those days, reinforces the evidence of
Ammianus and of Synesius, although he held no very ex-
treme views. Unless, however, we except his Philonian
notion that all knowledge may be derived from a few past
writings. For Macrobius affirmed that Virgil contains
practically all man needs to know, and that Cicero's brief
story of the dream of Scipio was a work second to none
and contained the entire substance of philosophy.^ Macro-
bius also believed that numbers possess occult power. He
dilated at considerable length upon each of those from one
to eight, emphasizing their perfection and far-reaching sig-
nificance. He held the good old P3rthagorean and Platonic
notions that the world-soul is constructed of number, that
the harmony of celestial bodies is ruled by number, and that
we derive the numerical values proper to musical conson-
ance from the music of the spheres.^ He was of the opin-
ion that to the careful investigator dreams and other strik-
ing occurrences will reveal an occult meaning.' As for
astrology, he believed that the stars are signs but not causes
of future events, just as birds by their flight or song reveal
matters of which they themselves are ignorant.* The sun
and planets, though in a way divine, are but material bodies,
and it is not from them but from the world-soul (pure
mind), whence they too come, that the human spirit takes

1 " Universa philosophiae integrita-s." Commentary on Dream of
Scipio, bk. ii, ch. 17. For Macrobius on Virgil see T. R. Glover, Lif&
and Letters in the Fourth Century a. d. (Cambridge, Eng., 1901), p. 181,
and Macrobius, Saturnaliay bk. a, ch. xvi, sec. 12. Macrobius has been
edited in French and Latin by Nisard. Paris, 1883.

2 Commentary, bk. i, chs. 5 and 6 ; ii, ch. i and 2.

8 Ihid., bk. i, ch. 7.

* Ihid.y bk. i, ch. 19.

p7] CRITICS OF MAGIC 97

Also he shows that the methods of divination are not
scientific. He asks: Why did Calchas deduce from the
devoured sparrow that the Trojan war would last ten years
rather than ten weeks or ten months ? ^ He points out that
the art is conducted in different places according to quite
different rules of procedure, even to the extent that a favor-
able omen in one locality is a sinister warning elsewhere.*
In short, whether he got his idea from the Greeks or not,
he has come, long before most men had reached that point,
to have a clear idea of the essential contradiction between
science and magic. " Quid igitur," he asks, " minus a
physicis dici debet quam quidquam certi significari rebus
incertis ?" *

Besides this sharp separation of divination from science
and besides his rejection of tradition, a third creditable
feature of Cicero's book is his question: What intimate
connection, what bond of natural causality can there be be-
tween the liver or heart or lung of a fat bull and the divine
eternal cause of things which rules the world ? * He re-
fuses to believe in any extraordinary bonds of sympathy
between things which, in so far as our daily experience and

castella -defenditis. Nam dum aruspicinam veram esse vultis, pihy-
siologiam totam pervertitis. Caput est in jecore, cor in extis: iam ab-
scedet, simul ac molam et vinum insperseris ; deus id eripiet, vis aliqua
conficiet, aut exedet Non ergo omnium interitus atque obitus natura
conficiet ; et erh aliquid quod aut ex nihilo oriatur, aut in nihilum subito
occidat. Quis hoc physicus dixit unquam? Aruspices dicunt? His
igitur quam physicis potius credendum existimas?"

1 Bk. ii, ch. 28. 2 Bk. ii, ch. 12. s sk. ii, ch. 19.

* Bk. ii, <fli. 12. "Atqui divina cum rerum natura tanta tamque
praeclara in omnes partes motusque diffusa, quid habere potest com-
mune, non dicam gallinacum fel (sunt enim qui vel argutissima haec
exta esse dicant) sed tauri opimi jecur aut cor aut pulmo, quid habet
naturale, quo deolarari possit quid futurum sit?"

CHAPTER VIII

Conclusion

Our survey of the Roman Empire and of the ancient
world of thought which it represented is finished. We have
found reason to beheve that hatred and dread of " magic,"
the confusion of science or of philosophy with magic,
the incurring of reputations as wizards by men of learn-
ing, were phenomena not confined to the Middle Ages.
We have seen some evidence of the prominence of magic
in the intellectual life of the Roman Empire, in the writings
and in the conduct of physicians and astronomers, of states-
men and philosophers. Just how prominent magic was one
hesitates to estimate, but one may safely affirm that it was
sufficiently prominent to merit the attention of the student
of those times. It is almost useless to chronicle the events
if we do not understand the spirit of an age.

Can the student of that age, we may ask in conclud-
ing, rightly interpret and appreciate it, can he make
proper use of its extant records, unless he recognizes
not merely that men made mistakes then and accepted a
mass of false statements concerning nature, but that the
best minds were liable to be esoteric and mystical, to incline
to the occult and the fantastic, to be befogged by absurd
credulity and by great mental confusion, to be fettered by
habits of childish and romantic reasoning such as occurs
in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and in Plato's Timaeus? Have
we a right * to attribute to the minds of that age our

definiteness and clarity of thought, our common sense, our
io8 [io8

I09] CONCLUSION 109

scientific spirit? Is it fair to take the words in which they
expressed their thought and to interpret these according to
our knowledge, our frame of mind ; to read into their words
our ideas and discoveries; to rearrange their disconnected
utterances into systems which they were incapable of con-
structing; to endeavor by nothing else than a sort of alle-
gorical interpretation to discover our philosophy, our
science, our ideals in their writings ? Have not even words
a greater definiteness and value now than once? When we
translate a passage from an ancient language are we not apt
to transfigure its thought ? These are, however, only ques-
tions.

Certainly there was much true scientific knowledge in the
Roman Empire. There was sane medical theory and prac-
tice, there was a great deal of correct information in regard
to plants, animals and the stars. Science was in the ascen-
dant; magic was in its latter stages of decay. We flatter
ourselves that it has now quite vanished away; then its doc-
trines were accepted only in part or in weakened form by
men of education. Perhaps, though I am far from assert-
ing this, magic played a less prominent part then in science
and in philosophy than in the later Middle Ages. Perhaps
we may picture to ourselves the minds of men in the twelfth
and thirteenth and succeeding centuries as awakening from
a long, intellectual torpor during the chaotic and dreary
" Dark Ages," and, eager for knowledge and for mental
occupation, but still inexperienced and rather bewildered,
as snatching without discrimination at whatever came first
to hand of the lore of the past. Thus for a time we might
find the most able men of the later age taking on the worst
characteristics of the earlier time. But this again is mere
speculation.

Moreover, we must remember that, if magic was accepted
only in part by men of learning in the Roman Empire, there

I lO MAGIC IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY [no

was no thoroughgoing scepticism. We sought in vain
for an instance of consistent disbelief. If, too, there
was an effort to make the magic, which was accepted, scien-
tific by basing it upon natural laws, as Quintus Cicero,
Seneca and Ptolemy tried to do, there was also, besides the
definite approval of magical doctrines, often a mys-
tical tone in the science and philosophy of the time. The
question of the relative strength of magic and of science in
those days must, then, be left unsettled. It is difficult
enough to judge even a single individual; to tell, for in-
stance, just how superstitious Cato was.

In closing we may, however, sum up very briefly those
elements which we selected as combining to give a fairly
faithful picture of the belief in magic which then pre-
vailed among educated people. Native superstitions from
which science had not yet wholly freed itself; much
fantastical and mystical lore from Oriental nations;
allegorizing and mysticizing in the interpretation of
books — which in Philo went to the length of a be-
lief that all knowledge could be secured by this means;
a portrayal of nature which attributed to her many magic
properties and caused medicine to be infected with magic
ceremony and to be based to some extent on the principle
of sympathetic magic ; a widespread and often extreme belief
in astrology; a speculative philosophy which was often
favorable to the doctrines of magic or even advanced some
itself; and the system of Neo-Platonism in especial, with
which we may associate the view — ^prevalent long before
Plotinus, however — ^that everything in the universe is in
close s)mipathy with everything else and is a sign of com-
ing events — these were the forces ready at the opening of
the Middle Ages to influence the future.

VITA

Lynn Thorndike, the writer of this dissertation, was
bom in July, 1882, at Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1902 he
received the A. B. degree from Wesleyan University, Con-
necticut, and in 1903 he obtained the A. M. degree from
Columbia University. He was in residence at Columbia
during the three years from 1902- 1903 to 1904- 1905. In
these years he attended lectures on Comparative Jurispru-
dence by Professor Munroe-Smith, lectures on American
Colonial History and on English History by Professor
Osgood, and lectures on European History by Professors
Robinson and Sloane. He was a member of Professor
Robinson's Seminar in Later Mediaeval and Modem His-
tory, and of Professor Sloane's Seminar on the work of
Napoleon. In 1902- 1903 and 1903- 1904 he was a Univer-
sity Scholar in European History; in 1904-5 he was Uni-
versity Fellow in European History. He is a member of

the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Ill

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